Roger Zelazny - Donnerjack

J

“Would you like to see the cottage?” Ayradyss asked. “Jay’s train may find it easier to run along the shore than across the ravines. We can wait there.”

“That would be nice.”

They picked their way down to the shore, trailed by a host of more or less substantial ghosts. These, contrary to expectations, did not move silently, but instead sang, laughed, and traded jokes. The crusader ghost seemed to be their informal leader, starting the songs, then rattling his chain in accompaniment.

The cottage stood much as they had last seen it, neatly sealed but cozy . As they were peering into windows, Ayradyss telling Alice about how her parents had seemed then, about Lydia’s slate of equations, about the haunting sound of Ambry’s pipes through the mist, a plump pigeon flew down from beneath the thatch and landed on Alice’s hand.

“Oh!”

“Lydia used such a bird as a messenger,” Ayradyss recalled. “Does it have anything?”

“There’s a spill of paper tucked into the band on its leg.”

Alice gently removed it and the pigeon trilled happily, flying to the roof and observing the noisy throng that had invaded its isolated home from a head tilted on side.

“What does it say?” Jay asked as Alice unrolled the paper.

“It’s a train schedule,” she turned it so they could see, “and this cottage is listed as a stop. I guess that the Brass Babboon has found the route here.”

“Good,” Jay said, some of his anxiety leaving him. “We have army and transport. Now all we have to do is win the war.”

“All?” Dubhe chuckled dryly.

“Well, one way or another, that’s all that’s left.”

A wind rose, and almost before they saw the billowing cloud that heralded the arrival of the Brass Babboon, the train was pulling to a halt before the cottage. Spouting fireworks, the Brass Babboon chortled greeting. Drum waved from the cab; Virginia managed a smile.

“Ready, Jay?” the mocking babboon face called.

“Ready!” Jay answered. He turned to face the rowdy mob. “All aboard! All aboard for Deep Fields!”

The songs of ghosts, which proved to be not at all like ghostly song, jetted outward from the Brass Babboon as the train traveled its twice-worn track into Deep Fields.

“ This train is bound for glory …”

“ You take the high road and I’ll take the low road …”

“ When Irish eyes are smiling …”

“ Brigadoon …”

When first they set out, the Brass Babboon sang along as loudly and tunelessly as any of the Scottish spirits, but as the tracks carried them to lower and lower realms (many of these imitations of hells, theologically grounded or purely imaginary) the train’s voice grew quieter and quieter, at last falling purely silent.

Jay D’Arcy Donnerjack, seated in the cab, reflecting on the version of Dante’s Inferno through which they had but recently passed and his father’s role in the programming of it, noted the change, and when the Brass Babboon remained unwontedly quiet spoke:

“What’s wrong, B.B.?”

“Bad vibrations coming back along the track, Jay. I don’t think we’re going to be making it into Deep Fields. Something has been set to bar the way.”

“Set by the lord of that place or by another?”

“Another is my feeling. The programming is not like what I encountered on my other visits to that place.”

“Can it hurt you if you run into it?”

“Yep.”

“Then brake shy of it. If we have to get out with picks and hammers we’ll clear it off the tracks.”

“Gotcha, Jay. It may not be a physical analog barrier, you realize.”

“I know, B.B. I was just speaking figuratively—and possibly optimistically. How’s our supply of strange attractors?”

“Full up. I agreed to carry some orphaned grohners and herd-mice to a receptive site and in return they loaded my cargo bins.”

“Thanks.”

“ De nada . I don’t really fancy being reduced to elementary design elements. If a bit of initiative can forestall that…”

“Thanks anyway.”

“Your father called me the ‘prince of puppets,’ but he cut my strings and let me free when he was done with the mission for which he created me. I’ve always appreciated that.”

“I’ll go back and bring a few of the others up to date,” Jay said. “Don’t worry. We’ll find a way through.”

The only answer they could come up with was to bring a select group into the Brass Babboon’s cab and wait for the first visual data on the barrier. Once through the moon portal, the ghosts were as substantial as the Veriteans, so even when the Brass Babboon expanded the cab to double-wide it got pretty crowded.

“Coming on to the barrier,” the train announced. “I’m starting to brake.”

“I don’t…” Alice began, peering through her binoculars. “Wait, I take that back. I do see something. It’s dark, oddly textured: fluttery or wavery. Like a solid heat mirage.”

“Moire,” Jay said flatly.

“Not the boss’s,” Dubhe added, raising his voice to be heard over the squeal of the brakes. “The color’s off. Except in rare cases moire at first appears to be black, but the deeper you look (not that many get that opportunity), the more color underlies the surface.”

“I only see green,” Virginia Tallent said. “And I know that moire. It’s the emanation of Earthma’s child.”

“ That’s the child?” Alice asked, unbelieving.

“No,” Virginia said, “but the barrier is of its making.”

As the Brass Babboon came to a halt, they were close enough now that the barrier could be seen with the naked eye. It gave the impression of being solidly centered on the gleaming train tracks, but every time Jay tried to see around it, the heaviest area shifted.

“B.B.,” he said, “can you give me an analysis of that thing?”

“Sure. Scanning.” A brief pause, then, “As you have said, its substance is like that of moire. Any proge coming into contact with it will be ended.”

Recalling how the flowers wilted and died whenever Alioth’s tiny bits of shed moire touched them, Jay nodded.

“Most of us are not proges,” he said. “Alice and I are both here in the flesh. That means that you and Dubhe are really the only ones it will stop.”

“I wish it were that simple, Jay,” the Brass Babboon said, and for the first time in Jay’s memory it sounded sad. “Further analysis shows that whoever set it there programmed it specifically to destroy you and/or any of your companions. I would suspect that the very fact of your identity would be enough to trigger the program.”

“What about a virt shapeshift?” Jay asked.

Virginia Tallent shook her head. “The shape shifts, not the identity. You would still be Jay Donnerjack, even if you made yourself look like some blue-eyed bimbo.”

As if he did not trust that the window would give him a true image, the crusader ghost had been leaning out the side of the Brass Babboon’s cab studying the barrier.

“I hae been thinkin’,” he said, “that yonder dubh thing brings’t’ mind somethin’ I hae seen before. Now I recall what it is. ‘Tis jus’ li’ the guardian of the moon portal.”

Hope made Jay straighten.

“I’ve never seen it,” he said, “but I know how to defeat that guardian. It just might work here…”

Without pausing to explain, he began to chant:

Angel of the Forsaken Hope,

Wielder of the Sword of Wind and Obsidian, Slice the algorithms from our Foe.

As he began to speak, he heard Ayradyss shriek, “Ah, Jay! No!” He tried to obey, but the words seemed to have a momentum of their own and to shape themselves from his resisting tongue.