“I didn’t want this. I told them I couldn’t… too old… luck run out…” He inhaled deeply, and sighed. “I begged them not to make me. And now, to end it here… ?” The gray eyes flickered. “But it never ends… except death.”
He’s broken, Gordon thought. The man’s cracked. He did not want to witness this humiliation. And I left Dena to seek this famous hero…
“You’re not amusing me, Squire,” Macklin said, coldly. “Don’t bore me, not if you value your remaining moments.”
But Powhatan seemed distracted, as if he were actually thinking about something else, concentrating on remembering something, perhaps, and maintaining conversation out of courtesy alone.
“I only… thought you ought to know that things changed a bit… after you left the program.”
Macklin shook his head, his eyebrows knotting. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Powhatan blinked. A shiver ran up and down his body, making Macklin smile.
“I mean that… that they weren’t about to give up on anything so promising as augmentation… not just because there were flaws the first time.”
Macklin growled. “They were too scared to continue. Too scared of us!”
Powhatan’s eyelids fluttered. He was still inhaling hard, in great, silent breaths.
Gordon stared. Something was happening to the man. Perspiration glistened in oily speckles all across his shoulders and chest before being washed away in the scattered, heavy rain. His muscles twitched as if in the throes of cramps.
Gordon wondered. Was the man falling apart before his eyes?
Powhatan’s voice sounded remote, almost bemused. “…newer implants weren’t as large or as powerful… meant more to supplement training in certain eastern arts… in biofeedback…”
Macklin’s head rocked back and he laughed out loud. “Neohippy augments? Oh! Good, Powhatan. Good bluff! That is rich!”
Powhatan didn’t seem to be listening, though. He was concentrating, his lips moving as if reciting something long ago memorized.
Gordon stared, blinked away raindrops, and stared harder. Faint lines seemed to be radiating out along Powhatan’s arms and shoulders, crisscrossing his neck and chest. The man’s shivering had heightened to a steady rhythm that now seemed less chaotic than… purposeful.
“The process also takes a lot of air,” George Powhatan said mildly, conversationally. Still inhaling deeply, he began to straighten up.
By now Macklin had stopped laughing. The Holnist stared in frank disbelief.
Powhatan talked on, conversationally. “We are prisoners in similar cages… although you seem to relish yours.… Alike, we’re both trapped by the last arrogance of arrogant days…”
“You aren’t…”
“Come now, General,” Powhatan smiled without malice at his captor. “Don’t look so surprised.… Surely you didn’t believe you and your generation were the last?”
Macklin must have instantly reached the same conclusion as Gordon — understanding that George Powhatan was talking only in order to buy time.
“Macklin!” Gordon shouted. But the Holnist wasn’t distracted. In a blur his long, machetelike knife was out, glittering wetly in the lamplight before slashing down toward Powhatan’s immobilized right hand.
Still bent and unready, Powhatan reacted in a twisting blur. The blow that landed tore only a glancing streak along his arm as he caught Macklin’s wrist in his free hand.
The Holnist cried out as they strained together, the General’s greater strength pushing the dripping blade closer, closer.
With a sudden step and hip movement, Powhatan fell backward, flicking Macklin overhead. The General landed on his feet, still holding on, and wrenched hard, in turn. Whirling like two arms of a pinwheel, they threw each other, gaining momentum until they disappeared into the blackness beyond the ring of light. There was a crash. Then another. To Gordon it sounded like elephants trampling the undergrowth.
Wincing at the pain of mere movement, he crawled out of the light far enough for his eyes to begin adapting to the darkness, and pulled up under a rain-drenched red cedar. He peered in the direction they had gone, but was unable to do anything more than follow the fight by its tumult, and the skittering of tiny forest creatures fleeing the path of destruction.
When two wrestling forms spilled out into the clearing again, their clothes were in tatters. Their bodies ran red rivulets from scores of cuts and scratches. The knife was gone, but even weaponless the two warriors were fearsome. In their path no brambles, no mere saplings endured. A zone of devastation followed them wherever the battle went.
There was no ritual, no elegance to this combat. The smaller, more powerful figure closed with ferocity and tried to grapple with his enemy. The taller one fought to maintain a distance, and lashed out with blows that seemed to split the air.
Don’t exaggerate, Gordon told himself. They’re only men, and old men, at that,
And yet a part of Gordon felt kinship with those ancient peoples who believed in giants — in manlike gods — whose battles boiled seas and pushed up mountain ranges. As the combatants disappeared again into the darkness, Gordon experienced a wave of the sort of abstract wondering that had always cropped up in his mind when he least expected it. Detached, he thought about how augmentation, like so many other newly discovered powers, had seen its first use in war. But that had always been the way, before other uses were found… with chemistry, aircraft, space-flight.… Later, though, came the real uses.
What would have happened, had the Doomwar not come… had this technology mixed with the worldwide ideals of the New Renaissance, and been harnessed by all its citizens?
What might mankind have been capable of? What, if anything, would have been out of reach?
Gordon leaned on the rough trunk of the cedar and managed to hobble to his feet. He wavered unsteadily for a moment, then put one foot in front of the other — limping step by step in the direction of the crashing sounds. There was no thought of running away, only of witnessing the last great miracle of Twentieth-Century science play itself out under pelting rain and lightning in a dark age forest.
The lantern laid stark shadows through the crushed brambles, but soon he was beyond its reach. Gordon followed the noises until, suddenly, it all stopped. There were no more shouts, no more heavy concussions, only the rumbling of the thunderheads and the roar of the river.
Eyes adapted to the darkness. Shading them from the rain, he finally saw — outlined against the gray clouds — two stark, reddish shapes standing atop a prominence overlooking the river. One crouched, squat and bull-necked, like the legendary Minotaur. The other was shaped more like a man, but with long hair that whipped like tattered banners in the wind. Completely naked now, the two augments faced each other, rocking as they panted under the growling storm.
Then, as if at a signal, they came together for the last time.
Thunder rolled. A blinding staircase of lightning struck the mountain on the opposite river bank, whipping the forest branches with its bellow.
In that instant, Gordon saw a figure silhouetted against the jagged electric ladder, arms outstretched to hold another struggling shape overhead. The blinding brightness lasted just long enough for Gordon to see the standing shadow tense, flex, and cast the other into the air. The black shape rose for a full second before the electric brilliance vanished and darkness folded in again.
The afterimage felt seared. Gordon knew that that tumbling figure had to come down again — to the canyon and jagged, icy torrent far below. But in his imagination he saw the shadow continue upward, as if cast from the Earth.