As she spoke, he tuned out her words. Very slowly an image began to supplant itself into Fredrick’s head. He saw peasants fleeing in horror at the thunder of hoofs, shadows descending, swords and battleaxes held high. He saw the innocent butchered in place, torsos shorn and limbs severed in the wake of horses and dust. Great blades glimmered, sinking into random flesh as simple dwellings were set ablaze. He saw women cutting heads off people. He saw babies plucked out of the arms of shrieking mothers. Beautiful strong women dismounted amid the terror, long dark hair flowing like manes, their bodies limber in battledress. Dismembered corpses twitched in the dirt as heads were dropped into the smoking pits. Blood gushed. Screams wheeled into the air. The glorious Ur locs directed blank faced slaves to eviscerate the dying and the dead. And through the atrocious clarity of the image, Professor Fredrick was able to glimpse the face of one of these destitute servitors.
It was his own.
“…and quite regrettable, though, the tendency of our intellectualism to discount the esoteric and the obscure.”
Fredrick’s consciousness resurfaced. His old heart slowed down like an afterfright when the image lapsed and was replaced by Ms. Eberle’s glinting eyes and grin.
“What happened to them?” Fredrick asked. He sipped his tea, to distract himself. The tea was cold.
“No one knows for sure. Like the Mayans and the Tai’tks, the Ur locs seemed to have disappeared within a very specified chronology. There’s no evidence to support the likelihood of a military annexation or genocide. Famine or plague are equally unlikely. My guess, based on the nomenclature of their religion, is that they probably disappeared via a premeditated population dispersal.”
“What makes you say that?”
“A simple connotative survey of their practice of worship. Every aspect of Ur loc culture is well recorded in the Roman archival records. The Ur locs, like the Druids and the Hindus, practiced a religion that was ascensional. They viewed physical life as a process of spiritual purification. More than likely the Ur locs deemed that they had risen to a sufficient spiritual stratification of purity, whereupon they dispersed themselves into outside populations, as per the mandates of the object of their belief.”
Incomprehension bloomed on Fredrick’s facial features. The object of their belief. She’d used that term several times, hadn’t she? He didn’t want to ask, but he asked anyway: “What exactly was the object of their belief?”
“According to the Romans, they called it the Ardat Lil,” she told him, “though countless religious systems have worshipped a similar or even identical deity. Consider the derivations from Middle and Old English: the loc in Ur loc, and the Lil in Ardat Lil. Hence, liloc, which roughly translates as sex spirit.”
Professor Fredrick still didn’t understand.
Ms. Eberle leaned back in the folding chair. Very subtly, then, she seemed to grin. “The Ardat Lil was a succubus.”
—
Chapter 1
Up ahead, shadows merged behind flashing red and blue lights. Her headlights illumined the great orange sign: “State Police Field Sobriety Checkpoint. Prepare To Stop.”
Oh, goodie, she thought. By now, after all the hubbub at the office, then Dr. Harold’s diagnostic inexplicabilities, Ann needed something to liven her up.
I am going to kick some ass.
Naturally, the police would pick the least convenient place to conduct this infamous unconstitutionality: the city’s main drag during homeward rush hour. Ann stopped her Mustang GT before one state trooper’s opened palm. Two more troopers, faceless before the stroboscopic backlighting, approached the driver’s window.
“Good evening, ma’am” one said.
“It was,” Ann replied.
“Pardon me?”
“I mean to say it was a good evening until you saw fit to burdening me with this unwarranted and unreasonable deprivation of my civilian right to vehicular transit.”
“That’s not a very good attitude, is it, ma’am?”
“Is it the prerogative of the state police to enforce attitudes, Officer?”
The trooper paused. “Can I see you driver’s license and registration, please?”
“I don’t know if you can, Officer. I’m not an eye doctor. Therefore, I’m in no credible position to determine what you can see. May you see my driver’s license and registration? Well, I suppose so.” Ann handed them over.
“Have you been drinking, Ms. Slavik?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“How much?”
“I’m not quite sure. I didn’t know it was a requirement of law for citizens to inventory their daily intake of fluids. Is it?”
“How much have you had to drink today, Ms. Slavik?”
She considered this. “Probably half a dozen cups of coffee. One Diet Coke for lunch. And one bottle of Yoo Hoo for the ride home.” She held the Yoo Hoo bottle up for him to see.
The trooper paused. “Have you been drinking any alcohol today, Ms. Slavik?”
“Alcohol? You mean the volatile and highly flammable hydroxyl compound commonly used in industrial solvents and cleaners, a deadly poison? No, Officer, I have not been drinking alcohol today. If you mean have I been drinking any alcoholic beverages, the answer is no.”
Again, the trooper paused. “Ms. Slavik, I’d like for you to get out of your car.”
“Why?” she asked. “To make me touch my nose against my will? To make me walk on a line against my will? To make me blow into a 1.0 mean Smith & Wesson Breathalyzer?”
“We call it a sobriety field test, Ms. Slavik.”
“Is that what you call it? I call it police harassment. It’s not against the law to be uncoordinated, Officer, nor are you professionally qualified to determine my state of physical coordination. Nor can you guarantee the judge beyond a doubt the accurate function and calibration of a breathalization device. Now, listen to me, Officer. I’m thirty seven years old. I stand five feet and four inches, and I weigh 109 pounds. You’re what? Early twenties, six foot two, 200 pounds at least, am I right, and your friend there, he’s even larger. In other words you two constables are big, strong, young men who can easily remove me from my vehicle against my will on a city thoroughfare. And, yes, I suppose, you could also force me to perform your ridiculous sobriety field test. I would be helpless to stop you, considering the state of fear I would be in. In fact, I suppose any woman would be helpless in such an instance against two big, strong, young men with deadly weapons on their hips. What I’m saying, Officer, is that if you want to forcibly remove me from my vehicle on a city street and force me to perform your embarrassing and grossly unconstitutional test, then go right ahead. If you do, however, I will sue your department for lost wages, future harm, and mental anguish, since such an instance would surely distress me to the point that I would miss work, that my employment status would be compromised, and that I would suffer mentally as a result. If, on the other hand, you choose to arrest me, I will sue your department for all of the above, plus false arrest.”
The two troopers seemed to waver in silence. “Are you a lawyer, Ms. Slavik?” the second one asked.
“Is it within the power of the police to forcibly extract the employment status of random citizens? I think I will reserve the right to remain silent from this point on, Officer, unless of course the United States Constitution has somehow been rescinded since the last time I looked. Now…let me pass.”