Lead us, that look said. Take us where you’re going. To salvation, to world’s end, to destruction.
A memory crashed in on Cal, of the dream he’d had the morning before the Change, where darkness surrounded him, and the hilt of the burning cold sword found his outstretched hand-the same sword he now wore in the scabbard at his belt-and the despairing, unseen multitude cried out for him to save them, to act….
And he did nothing.
“I don’t have the answer,” Cal said.
“Yeah, we know that, Chief,” Olifiers agreed. “But nobody else even seems to know the question.”
That night, for the first time since before the beginning, Cal had the dream again.
He dreamed chaos.
Darkness, blacker than anything he’d ever conceived of, center-of-the-earth black, no-universe-yet-made black, dead-a-thousand-years black. Voices shouting, so clear that he could distinguish not only male and female, but each separate human soul screaming. He could tell rage from pain from terror. In the darkness of the dream he could hear his own blood hammering in his ears.
The sound of blows, metal on metal-metal tearing flesh. The stink of blood and of earth soaked with blood, of smoke and of charring.
He stood at the black heart of the tumult as they cried their anguish, their despair, demanded, pleaded-
That he act.
A shard of light split the blackness like a razor stroke. It glanced across an immense, irregular mound that might have been the bodies of men or merely the things they had used.
An object gleamed atop it, brilliant in the light, and Cal saw that it was a sword. Not opulent and bejeweled but plain, the leather of the hilt palm-worn. This weapon had seen use.
He reached out, seized it in his hand. The grooves and creases worn into the hilt by sweaty usage fit his palm. It was his palm that had made them.
As he drew it out, the light danced liquid on the blade, flashed a Rorschach of half-glimpsed living things in its silver-gold. Around him, the cries rose and blended to a single keening of raw need and pain. Holding the sword high, he knew what he must do.
But still he hesitated.
And here the dream added a new detail, one that tore freezing dead fingers into his heart.
In the light from the sword, Cal could make out one of the figures beside him in the darkness, a frail, delicate form with hair fine as spiderweb and eyes a scorching blue….
It was his sister, it was Tina.
And others dim beyond her, among the multitude of souls, barely discernible, crying out to him, begging…
Colleen. Doc. Goldie.
Words surged from within him, a reply ripped from his throat, his soul, screaming above their screams.
“IT WILL KILL HER!”
He did nothing, knowing they would die.
All of them were torn shrieking away by the Blackness, the Dark, the Storm….
Their cries were drowned in thunder that rent the universe apart.
Cal awoke to the sound of his own sobbing.
Far miles away, in the sea of mists, leaning his great pebbled arms against the railing of what some might have been deceived into calling a bridge, the distant, familiar one thought of the dream he’d had again.
Dead-a-thousand-years black…
He never saw himself in the dream, never could discern what role he might play. But he saw others there, ones he knew, enemies, those who wished him harm, never friends.
But then, he had no friends.
No, strike that. He had one.
A fragile thing to pin your hopes on, a dream of chaos and an old man blind as a stone.
Even so, he admitted, it beat getting a real job….
His dragon’s laughter, resonant and grating as a body being dragged over gravel, boomed out across the fraudulent sea and counterfeit sky…and was even heard by the Thing that ruled dragon, and sea, and sky.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
Finishing his shift on sentry duty, Doc Lysenko found Cal Griffin sitting at the far edge of roof, peering out at the clouds, and the night, and the drifting snow.
“You’ve said that before,” Cal said, not looking at him.
“I’m a man of simple habits, Calvin. I find what works and I repeat it.”
“Not a bad trait for a doctor.”
“No…” Doc concurred. He crouched against the raised lip at the edge and faced Cal. “‘I could be bounded up in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I had bad dreams….’”
“Hamlet, act two, scene two,” Cal said.
“I’m impressed.”
“Blame my mother…and public TV. What’s your point?”
“You’re a worrier.”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“Oh, indeed, I would never presume to separate you from your angst. I’m merely offering a sympathetic ear.”
Cal said nothing.
“You have a golden opportunity for complaining here,” Doc added. “Don’t waste it.”
Cal smiled at that, a weary smile, the weight of the world in it. “Oh, Doc, I am so not the man I need to be.”
“How many called to leadership feel they are? At least, the deserving ones? The megalomaniacs rarely have such doubts.”
Doc looked into the darkness to the uncertain future, then from memory quoted, “‘If only the men truly up to this challenge, the moral giants, were here to assume this mantle. But failing their appearance on the scene, we ourselves must take it up, though we are woefully inadequate to the task.’ You know who said words to that effect?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“It was John Adams, just before your country’s Revolution. So I’m afraid, Calvin, that your qualms are anything but unique.”
“Doc-”
“Don’t ‘Doc’ me. You inspire others to transcend themselves. That is a rare power, Calvin, greater than parlor tricks such as passing through walls or making balls of light. The block-and-tackle doesn’t question its purpose, nor the spatula nor the paper clip. But because we are conscious, we do, endlessly.
“Calvin, if Colleen is our rock and Goldie our erratic sage, then you are our beacon. Shine, Calvin. Just shine.”
“They’re looking to me to be something I’m not,” Cal said. “To be this…legend. I mean, Jesus, they broke out of slavery, came on the run in search of this larger-than-life tin god.”
“And that is such a bad thing?”
“If the Change brought about anything good, it’s that it made me be who I am instead of pretending to be something I’m not.”
“Calvin, six words. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”
“For someone from Kiev, you’ve seen a lot of American movies.”
“Five years of selling hot dogs and not going to singles bars.”
“Okay, okay, I get your point. Print the Legend. If the Legend is what these people need-and what I suppose we need, too-then maybe I shouldn’t avoid it but rather embrace it.”
“I must say, Calvin, you’re getting so adept at articulating what I am about to say, you really don’t need me anymore. Pray continue.”
“These people are looking for a cure, and I don’t have one. But you’d say it’s like medicine. Sometimes hope is all you can offer, and though it may seem a false hope, it can help people marshal their forces, actually get better.”
“Yes,” Doc replied. “Miracles do happen, if one comes to it with a good heart and the possibility of good actually happening.”
Cal mulled it over, then said, “It’s medicine, even if it’s an empty black bag on one hand…the Storm on the other. Which is the better choice to offer?”
“And what is your answer?”