Eternal Life Inc. (12 page)

“Did you tell Samuel about these things chasing you?” Jericho asked.

Harry shook his head. “He wasn’t interested in my resurrections.
He said that wasn’t why I was there.” He glanced over at Diana and wondered how much he should say and how much she already knew.

Jericho saw his glance and waved it aside. “Kade was right,” he said resignedly. “That’s not why you were there.”

Harry could hear the tone of self-reproach in Jericho’s voice and said, “No use spilling over cried milk.” He grinned. “Besides, I beat them and I’m here now.”

“You not only beat them,” Jericho said. “You saw them for what they really are. I don’t think they liked that. I think after you got away this last time, they began to suspect that maybe you were something special.”

“Special?”

“Special meaning beyond you being the famous, ‘Harry Neumann’,” Doc said. “They’re looking for a prophecy. Maybe they’re beginning to think you’re it.”

“What kind of prophecy?”

“They call him the ‘King of the Dead’. You’ve died enough times to be called that, don’t you think? According to their seers, he’s the only one standing between them and the conquest of earth.”

“Come on, Doc, you’re mistaking me for one of those blockbuster heroes I played. People are doing it all the time.”

Jericho shook his head and smiled. “Maybe I am, but I don’t think they are,” he said. “In the beginning, they probably figured you for a pushover. They’d just capture your ka during a resurrection, ride it piggy-back into your body, and take possession. You’d be a valuable asset for them if you came through it intact, with your memories, behavior patterns, and whole personality gestalt under their control. To anyone outside you’d just be Harry Neuman, but inside they’d be pulling the strings and, the worst of it is, you could be conscious of what they were doing with you and couldn’t stop it, even if what they were doing made you sick with disgust.”

“Oh shit!” Harry muttered and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the vision of Susan’s battered face. All of a sudden, what had been bothering him about Susan’s story made sense. Roger would never have hurt Susan. He was devoted to her and loved her deeply. It had taken Harry a long time to finally admit that to himself. Roger could never beat her up like that, not if he was in his right mind.

“It’s not Roger doing this,” Susan said. “It’s something else inside Roger…something wearing Roger’s body. It’s not the man I married. It’s something dark and evil and violent. It’s not Roger.”

No, it wasn’t Roger, Harry thought, and now he knew what it was. Roger had resurrected quite a few times. They must have gotten hold of his ka then. No wonder Susan was desperate to get as far away from him as possible.

“Harry, are you alright?”

Harry opened his eyes and looked up at Jericho. The look of concern on Jericho’s face bordered on fear. Harry put on one of his carefree, don’t-give-a-damn, Hollywood hero grins. “Don’t worry Doc, there’s only me in here,” he said and tapped his head. “No aliens allowed.”

“What is it, Harry?” Jericho asked.

Harry shook his head. “It’s nothing Doc really, just bad memories out of my checkered past.” There was no way he could tell him about Roger without telling him about Susan.

He looked at Diana and upped the wattage on his grin. “Besides, you’ve probably read all about it in the gossip columns. They should be paying me royalties.”

Harry saw a look of distaste flicker across her face. Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Smart lady, she wasn’t buying it and neither was Jericho. Harry decided to change the subject. “From all the rumors I’ve heard, it sounds like there was a good chance I wouldn’t have survived wolf possession intact.”

Jericho nodded. “It’s not always their best door into this
world. Every time they fail to take complete possession, one of their soldiers is left trapped inside unable to get control, with his personality and his host’s leaking into each other. It’s madness.”

“So, how long have you known about all this?” Harry asked. “And how come you didn’t warn me?”

“I didn’t warn you because I didn’t know about any of this until last night, when Diana and her sister came to my island compound and asked me for help.”

Diana gave an almost imperceptible start and shot a quick glance at Jericho.

The old man isn’t telling me everything, Harry thought. “According to Roger, you didn’t leave my side the whole time I was unconscious after I resurrected,” he said unable to keep a sudden edge of suspicion from his voice.

Jericho nodded noncommittally.

“You just said you didn’t know anything about this until Diana came to you at your house, last night,” Harry said. “So how could you be in two places at once?”

Jericho leaned back and regarded Harry. “Do you trust me, Harry?” he asked.

For the first time, he had to think about that. Jericho was his best friend. He had pulled him out of the gutter and given him his life back. “Of course I trust you,” he said, but realized that his trust was no longer unconditional.

Jericho was perceptive enough to pick up on this and sighed resignedly. “You met Mae West, I gather?” he said at last.

Harry nodded, wondering where this was going.

“She was one of my earliest successes,” Jericho said. “She keeps surprising me, constantly upgrading her personality with every detail she can find on her original and then assimilating it into her core personality and extrapolating from there.” He smiled like a proud father.

“She’s beautiful,” Harry said and reined in his impatience. Jericho sometimes had a roundabout way of getting to the point
but he always got there eventually.

“The next logical step, of course, was to make an eidolon of myself,” Jericho said. “It turns out he’s surpassed my wildest expectations. He’s the newest, most powerful, self-referral quantum AI, much like Mae and your Lady of the Road,” he added, referring to the AI in Harry’s car. “But unlike either of them, my eidolon has a living person to model his character on. He constantly monitors my every move and gesture, analyses my speech patterns and shifting moods, mimics every idiosyncratic character trait. He’s perfect, Harry. He even fooled Chueh, and he and I have known each other a long time.”

“So it was your eidolon who took in Diana and her sister last night,” Harry said. “But why did she go there in the first place? She must have known I’d resurrected and you’d be here with me. Everyone in the Empire knows that; it’s become a tradition.”

“Because she knew all about my eidolon,” Jericho said irritably and left it at that.

Harry was tempted to push but decided Jericho wasn’t going to be pushed. The old man was stubborn, secretive, self-contained by nature, and seldom told all he knew. One of the pillars their friendship built on was that Harry accepted this and trusted that Jericho had the best of intentions and would always tell him if there was something he needed to know. So why was he having a problem with it now?

He glanced at Diana. She was studying him closely.

He looked away. The problem with unconditional trust is that once you begin to question it, you can’t stop, he thought. “You founded Eternal Life,” he said. “You must have been one of the first to hear the rumors about people not coming back from resurrection or coming back insane. Didn’t you suspect anything?”

“Of course, I heard the rumors,” Jericho said. “I even got letters from concerned relatives screaming about satanic possession and the curse of resurrection. But I thought they were just like all the other crank letters and rumors I’ve seen and heard
through the years, maybe a bit more graphic and desperate but…”

Jericho shrugged and spread his hands palms up. “What can I say? I ignored them. I told myself they were just part of the usual rebirth trauma and weren’t my concern. I was finished with Eternal Life. I’d moved on to other things. It was Roger’s show now. Oh, I made a few discreet inquiries when the rumors surfaced in the papers. I even confronted Roger…”

Harry snorted sarcastically. “I bet that helped a lot.”

“Not a lot,” Doc agreed.

“I’ll bet,” Harry growled.

Doc looked at him sharply. “Don’t go jumping to conclusions, son,” he said softly. “Things and people change. They’re not always what we think they are.”

Harry looked Jericho in the eye and said, “Amen to that,” in a voice dripping sarcastic accusation.

21

Jake Lloyd’s Daughters

There was a strained silence in the room. Diana studied a line of storm clouds forming over the Ryoangi Garden, and Jericho stared at the far wall, tapping his finger irritably on the table.

Harry realized he’d let his unfounded suspicions push him over the line. Jericho was his best friend. He’d answered all his questions. If there was something between him and Diana and these wolves he didn’t want to talk about, that was his business. And that leaves the ball in my court, he thought.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “It was uncalled for.”

Jericho turned and looked at him for a long moment. Finally, he nodded to himself as if he’d seen what he needed to see. “Apology accepted,” he said with a terse smile.

“Good,” Harry said. “Now maybe you can tell me about these wolves. You said they come from an alternate universe or timeline. How is that possible, and what do they want with us?”

“What they want is to enslave and eat us,” Jericho said. “Believe me, these things are the boogeyman of everyone’s worst nightmare. As to how they got here.” He glanced over at Diana, who nodded her head as if giving permission. “You have to know something about Isis and the work she did with Norma-genes.”

“Who’s Isis?” Harry asked.

Doc looked over at Diana. “Why don’t you tell him,” he said. “She is, after all, your sister.”

Diana nodded and took a deep breath, like a diver getting ready to go off the high board. “Isis is not only my sister,” she said, “she’s my twin sister. We’re identical twins.”

“Interesting,” Harry said.

Diana raised a questioning eyebrow. “And?” she asked.

Harry shrugged. “And nothing special, except that you were
both named after the twin aspects of the Goddess.” He noticed how her eyes widened with surprise that he should know this. So just to hammer the point home he added, “Isis is the Egyptian goddess of motherhood, compassion, and healing and wears a sun disk diadem. On the other hand, Diana is the Moon goddess, goddess of the kingdom of the dead, and goddess of the hunt. Some say it’s a hunt for dark knowledge. They also say she could be a merciless, vengeful, bloodthirsty bitch,” he added and cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “Is that true?” he asked with exaggerated innocence and a provocative grin. He wasn’t sure why he was baiting her, but it probably had something to do with secrets and trust or rather lack of trust.

Diana gave a twitch of her shoulder as if shrugging off an irritating insect. “We were named by the Goddess,” she said with cool distain and paused as if daring him to make another comment. “She came to my father in a dream on the night we were born and named us. The significance of the names and the naming was not lost on him. My father was after all a classical scholar,” she added with a touch of bitterness. “In an age that had no use for classical scholarship.”

Harry was busy putting two and two together. “Your father wouldn’t happen to be Jake Lloyd?” He asked excitedly.

Diana looked surprised. “Why, yes,” she said. “You know of him?” she asked it as if she had trouble believing that.

Harry cast an amused glance at Doc and nodded. “I’ve read a couple of his books.”

“How interesting,” she said giving a little, skeptical twist to her words. “What have you read?”

She was testing him, of course. He was used to it. People just couldn’t seem to accept that a movie star, action hero, with a reputation for womanizing and drunk and disorderly behavior ever read anything but the funny pages.

“We’re waiting, Mr. Neuman,” she said with a schoolmarm’s questioning tilt to her head as if waiting for the dimmest bulb on
the tree to fail.

“Sorry, wool gathering,” he said, flashing her a crooked grin, and then added,
”Shaman Games, Saints and Sinners, The Mythology of Enlightenment,”
and tossed in half a dozen others for good measure. He was showing off of course and Doc rolled his eyes despairingly, but Harry didn’t care. She irritated him with her smug, superior assumption that he couldn’t possibly know about her father and probably couldn’t even read! He was a little surprised at his reaction. When other people did the same thing, he just laughed it off, but this was different because it was her and for some reason that made it painfully personal.

Diana arched her eyebrows in surprise and looked at him with genuine interest. “What did you think of them?” she asked.

“Interesting,” he said giving the words a skeptical twist of gentle rebuff.

Diana looked at him with confused embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s all right,” Harry said, “I’m used to people seeing only the cardboard cutout, media image. Besides, this prodigious erudition is really only skin deep. For most of the last seven years, I was exactly what everyone expected of a brawling, drunken womanizer.”

Once again, he noticed her look of distaste, quickly hidden but not quick enough. He decided it was time to change the subject. “What made you go to Jericho’s in the first place?” he asked. It was obvious they had a history, and he had been wondering about it ever since he got there.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Diana said, momentarily caught off balance by this sudden change of direction.

“It sounds like you and your sister were in some sort of trouble with the wolves and the Norma-genes. So why did you run to Jericho for protection? You could have gone to the authorities.”

Diana cast a sidewise glance at Jericho. Once again Harry had
the feeling that they were weighing out the truth, deciding how much to short-change him.

“We’re waiting, Miss. Lloyd,” he said, mimicking her voice from earlier. It was a petty ploy born of irritation and anger. Once again it was a matter of trust. She and Jericho didn’t trust him and it rankled.

Jericho was perceptive enough to realize what was happening and said. “I’m an old friend of the family.”

“So you knew Jake Lloyd?” Harry said. Jericho nodded.

“And you never told me?”

“You never asked.”

“That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s the only one you’ll get.”

Harry shook his head in disbelief. Jericho knew how important Jake Lloyd’s writings were to him. Shortly after he revealed the strange abilities that constant resurrection was calling forth, Jericho gave him a copy of
Shaman Games
with the comment, “This might help explain what’s happening,” and it did. Harry devoured the book and asked for more and Jericho obliged with a whole stack of Lloyd’s books. In those early days when he was just beginning to realize what was happening and could easily have been terrified, doubting his own sanity, these books became invaluable guides. They showed him that others had experienced these things; lots of others throughout history had walked this road before him. They were called mystics, shamans, seers, and saints. The most recent one had been the Prophet General of the Goddess, who founded the Church of She. They all had the same thing in common. They had walked in their kas out onto the edge of the Astral Planes or the Shining Sea of the Gods or whatever other form this magical non-space might take and it changed them. They were no longer ordinary men.

Lloyd seemed to have an intimate, even encyclopedic
knowledge of all this, and his books referred back to hundreds of pre-Crash sources, documenting a rich tradition of knowledge and firsthand experience. More than anything else, it had been Lloyd’s writing that had given Harry the intellectual strength to take his first step into his ka and out and into the spirit realm, together with Samuel Kade.

Harry looked at Diana. She smiled uncertainly.

“I’m in awe of your father,” he said at last. “He was a giant. I wish I’d met him. No one in the Empire measures up to his boot heels.”

“In fact, no one in the Empire cares,” Diana said. “His books have been out of print for years.”

“I think that’s probably about to change,” Jericho said.

Diana smiled wearily. “I’m afraid you’re right.”

“Where did you get the books you lent me?” Harry asked.

“My own private copies,” Jericho said. “You could probably get a complete set from the Imperial Library though.”

“Or from the Cathedral of the Goddess,” Diana added. “The Church of She keeps a complete set in all cathedral libraries.”

“Why?” Harry asked curiously.

Diana shrugged. “They see my father’s writings as part of the same spiritual tradition that gave birth to the Church.”

“I think we’ve gotten way off the track,” Jericho said, looking pointedly at Diana and, once again, Harry had the feeling they were getting into something the old man didn’t want him getting into. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover and not much time.”

“Of course,” Diana said and smiled at Harry. “I was going to tell you about Isis.” She reached up and pulled out the golden locket that hung around her neck. Harry noticed a crescent moon inside a blazing sun engraved on its front. It was the sign of the Church of She. Diana pressed a hasp and the locket sprang open revealing a hologram of two young women.

She pressed the hasp again and the holo-images expanded until they were each about six inches across. The two young
women were facing each other and talking animatedly. Diana must have shut off the sound, and Harry could only guess at what they were saying as they both threw back their heads and laughed with the same unconscious, mirror-image body language.

For a second, he was reminded of the little plastic heart in his pocket, with the hologram of him and Susan mugging for the camera. He pushed the thought firmly down into a drawer in his mind and then closed the drawer and locked it.

He studied the image of the two women. At first glance, they appeared as unalike as any two strangers. The one who was obviously Diana was casually dressed in jeans and a blue denim work shirt, open at the throat and spotted with what looked like different colored dabs of paint. Her sleek black hair was longer than it was now and pulled back in a girlish ponytail, tied with a red bandana. As far as Harry could see, she wore no makeup.

Her sister on the other hand wore a spotless, white, lab smock buttoned all the way up, with an official looking ID-badge just visible in the lower left hand corner. Her hair was a striking platinum blonde, cut to a radical pageboy bristle. Her jade green eyes and blonde hair were in striking contrast to her deep golden-brown complexion. This was further heightened by midnight blue eyeliner and bright ruby lipstick. A pair of black horn-rimmed data-glasses hung on a fine golden chain around her neck.

Harry looked up at Diana. “You didn’t try very hard to look alike, did you?” he said. “The only question is, which of you is the real you?”

Diana collapsed the hologram and closed the locket. “Isis and I always needed to somehow express our individuality, to draw a line, to be different from each other. It wasn’t that we disliked each other. We were our own best of friends. I mean, how could it be otherwise? I guess being identical twins just exaggerated the need to be a unique individual, that’s all.

“But we always tried to be true to ourselves, even when we chose very different ways of doing it. And I think we succeeded. Even though we chose different careers, we each found fulfillment and a degree of success. For example, I became, among other things, an artist, a painter while…”

“You’re a painter?” Harry interrupted, suddenly making another connection. “Do you happen to sign your paintings with a ‘D’ resting in a crescent moon?

Diana looked at him in surprise. “Why yes,” she said. “How did you know?”

“I bought one of your paintings,” he said excitedly. “When I asked the dealer the name of the artist, he refused to tell me. He said the artist wished to remain anonymous. I thought that was a helluva way to run a business.”

“But you see, it’s not a business,’ she said with an enigmatic smile.

“The price tag said different,” Harry answered with a sardonic smile of his own.

“My paintings are not for just anyone,” she said. “They find their owner. If their owner can’t pay the price, then the painting finds a way to them anyway.”

Harry raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Your paintings know who they’re meant for?”

“What painting did you buy?” she asked.

“An icon called, ‘The Madonna of Eternal Life’.”

“Of course,” she said, as if that proved her point, and strangely enough it did.

As soon as he saw it in the gallery window, he knew he had to have that beautiful little icon of the Madonna. She was dressed in glowing blue robes, standing in a spiraling tunnel of light. She reached out with both hands as if offering him the spiritual promise hidden in every resurrection he had ever been through. It was the promise of the eternal life of the ka made manifest in the loving arms of the Goddess of light. But what finally pulled
him in off the street was the face of the Madonna, that same sweetly smiling, loving face he had seen time and again in every resurrection and in countless dreams afterwards.

Harry leaned back and regarded the young woman across from him with a new sense of respect and something akin to awe. “How many times have you resurrected?” he asked.

“Never,” she replied.

“But how could you…? He stopped, at a loss for words.

She smiled, understanding. “You know you don’t have to die to see these things,” she said, casually fingering the silver locket round her neck.