Myths of the Modern Man (9 page)

Most of their high ceremonies took place in forest groves, but they were not above emulating the Romans with similar ritual temple sacrifices to the gods. The Celts, however, were also in the habit of making human sacrifices to the gods.

I did not feel good about this.

Like a dark cave inside, the temple stank of blood and death. Taliesin placed the silver torch above a stone altar. Boudicca produced an iron spear that had been purposely bent at the tip, a symbol to represent the failing in battle of their enemies. What enemies? The Romans? As yet no rebellion had started, not really, only the fermenting of resentment. What was she planning, and was she planning it now?

Nemain voiced prayers to two warrior goddesses on behalf of Boudicca, to protect her and lead her to victory. He called upon the goddess Badb to inspire courage in Boudicca’s people, and for good measure, entreated the goddess Macha to curse the enemy.

Macha knew about curses. One of the most powerful of the goddesses of war, Macha was said to have been forced to outrun the horses of the king of Ulster because of a boast her husband made of her prowess and because of a dare and a threat by the Ulster king to execute her husband if she did not follow through. Macha, though very pregnant at the time, performed that astounding athletic feat and beat all the horses. Not content to simply win the bet and save her prideful husband’s life, she vengefully put a curse on all the men of Ulster for making her exert herself in her delicate condition. Those men were made to suffer the pain of childbirth for five days and five nights.

Macha gave birth to twins, and the wombless men she had cursed with labor pains presumably got the message. So much for her being delicate.

Boudicca watched the torchlight make darting finger patterns on the smoke-darkened walls of the hut. Nemain produced a long, jeweled dagger. He passed it over the altar, and then he presented it to Boudicca, who raised it above her head. She lowered it to her chest and glanced towards me. I stood perfectly still, and met her eyes.

Taliesin stepped around the altar, and bowed before Boudicca. He slid past me to the door, and gave me a quick, furtive glance. He left.

Boudicca turned her body towards me, still brandishing the dagger before her in both her hands, her palms open and upraised. I did not know what was expected of me, or what was to be done to me. Sometimes instinct is everything in situations like this, and I was oddly content to let whatever happen, happen. I don’t know why.

I slowly extended my hand towards her, and touched my fingertips to the dagger, a brief moment of tribute to the war goddesses, to Boudicca’s intentions, to Nemain’s power, and to the acknowledgment of my own human frailty.

I lifted my hand away.

Taliesin stepped back into the hut, carrying a lamb in his arms. He secured the animal to the altar, on top of the broken spear. Boudicca looked at the dagger in her hands as she might with wonder at a newborn child, and handed it as carefully back to Nemain. He plunged it into the young sheep.

A bleat of pain, and its dark animal eyes filled with incomprehensible panic. Taliesin subdued her thrashing. Her blood gushed like a sudden dark fountain, painting her fleece, staining the arms of Taliesin’s robe just as he had matted his own blood with his sleeve when we had fought. A splash of blood hit Nemain, which he bore with dignity and concentrated deeply on the stream and patterns of the bloodletting to divine their future as well as to make a votive offering over the sign of the bent spear.

Boudicca, too, got spattered with dots of blood upon her pale yellow tunic, on her bodice, and on her bare arms, but she did not flinch to avoid them, nor did she seem to delve into the mystery of its magic like Nemain. She only stood, watching stoically, and turned her head towards me again. Was she looking for my reaction, or did I have a role in the ritual yet to come?

Or was this my role: simply to be present. Was being present an honor or an obligation?

The poor animal suffered agonies before us. Repulsed for its sake, yet I felt immediately euphoric that it was not me who had been placed upon the altar.

I had no idea I could still be euphoric about anything. My God. So, I wanted to live after all.

CHAPTER 7

Eleanor relieved her nameless subordinate from babysitting the lab, and the body who wasn’t there, with a silent jerk of the head to leave. Now.

She left.

At last alone to enjoy the solitude of her own place, which held even more of her personality than her own utilitarian apartment, Eleanor slid down upon the metal lab stool and contemplated the white walls of the cleanest room she had ever seen. Someone removed the dust daily, she did not know whom. She appreciated the results, but did not want to know how it got that way.

Its antiseptic lack of ornamentation lent a style which, couple with the expensive, and to most occasional visitors, inexplicable, sophisticated equipment suited her need for mystique. Such mystique tended to keep people at arm’s length, which was where she wanted most people.

Seemingly impenetrable quiet insulated the lab from any outside world, and she had always taken that lack of sounds for solitude, not questioning that solitude might convey something deeper, something more spiritual.

Eleanor rechecked her panels. She looked again at the empty module, like a person beset with obsessive-compulsive disorder who must check one more time that the back door is locked. The blankness under the clear shield, the nothing-but-air shining under the harsh lights of the lab, so bright as to leave no shadows, satisfied Eleanor. No shadows at all.

However, her contentment grew thin after a few, very quiet moments. The events of the afternoon followed her here and spun doubts in her mind. She pressed the call button, and within the minute, Milly entered the lab with that inevitable expression on her face, a perfect blend of boredom and contempt. Eleanor quickly looked back to her monitor, as an automatic gesture of social pecking order by not giving Milly the courtesy of her full attention, but instead said over her shoulder,

“
Get me everything you can on Dr. L’Esperance.”

“
Ma’am?”

“
Bio, stats, every bit of intel you can dig up. Immediately.”

Eleanor heard the click of the door as Milly left. Eleanor exhaled, and then rechecked everything she had to monitor Colonel Moore and the progress of her mission, right down to glancing at the empty module again.

Soon, Milly returned with a small encoded disk, much sooner than Eleanor had anticipated. Milly really did know her stuff.

“
Thank you.”

“
Will there be anything else?” The question so startled Eleanor that she actually lifted her head and looked right into Milly’s pale, somewhat freckled face. Milly’s eyes were gray, she noticed for the first time, and her short, straight red hair bounced easily when she turned her head quickly.

“
Um, no.”

Milly smiled, with what Eleanor perceived to be sarcasm, and turned on her heel, and left the lab.

Dr. L’Esperance was forty years of age. Eleanor noticed that first as the data began to regurgitate on her screen, and she was surprised because Dr. L’Esperance looked about 10 or even 15 years younger. Born Quebec. Undergraduate degrees, doctoral degrees. Not married. No siblings. Current residence: here. Eleanor raised her eyebrows, amused. Clearly, the file certainly was up to date, if it was anything.

Medical history. Work history. Impressive think tank resume. Apparently she was much sought after. Eleanor chided herself for not having known about Dr. L’Esperance before the weird woman was brought to them. Her reputation for peculiarity alone should have preceded her, if not her accomplishments. Eleanor admittedly took little interest beyond her own work in her field, and realized now that left her clearly at a disadvantage among peers because of it. Even now, Dr. L’Esperance, an honored guest, dined at the president’s reception, while Eleanor hid in her lab spying on the ephemera of Dr. L’Esperance’s life. Like looking through her big sister’s diary while Big Sister danced at the prom.

That realization made Eleanor especially uncomfortable.

She continued her search. Advisor on special committee to the UN. Height: six feet, two inches. Eleanor smiled, shaking her head.

“
Freak,” she muttered. Eyes: green. Yes, even John had noticed her eyes. Dr. L’Esperance was an attractive woman, an intelligent woman. Despite these gifts, she seemed socially handicapped, wooden and deficient at reading cues from the behavior of people around her. Well, some very brilliant people were like that. At least that was some sort of flaw and a detriment to being taken seriously.

Being honest, Eleanor admitted to herself she was resentful of Dr. L’Esperance, and perhaps even jealous. She decided that alone could not be her motive in eliminating Dr. L’Esperance, because it was beneath her, and because that would be perceived by the Committee. She must make the removal of her rival seem more like a fall from grace than a fall...or a push.

African ancestry. Right-handed. Hmm, still had all her wisdom teeth.

Eleanor read and re-read the information, at once determined to root out the source and object of Dr. L’Esperance’s ambition from the data on her scholarly and career paths, and yet Eleanor was stupidly fascinated by the innocuous and unimportant minutiae of Dr. L’Esperance’s life. Eleanor knew that those years Dr. L’Esperance spent with the think-tank was important to making some meaningful value judgment on Dr. L’Esperance, but Eleanor was more taken by the simple description of her eye color and skin color, her weight: 160 pounds. Eleanor would have guessed she weighed much less, but then muscle weighed more than fat, and the woman was clearly toned. Probably one of those workout freaks. Eleanor wondered what a picture of herself might look like painted in data and blipped by a cursor on a computer screen. Would she recognize herself in the data, as she might recognize herself in a mirror? That is, if she were the type to indulge in looking in mirrors.

Dr. L’Esperance, according to the data, was childless and was unmarried and without a romantic partner. Her mother and father, both deceased, had been musicians. Musicians? How did they beget this weird physicist? Were they jazz musicians or did they play with a symphonic orchestra? What instruments did they play? Perhaps they weren’t high-brow at all. Maybe they were has-been rockers whose lifetime of drugs and alcohol was what produced a daughter with the genius IQ but the personality of dish detergent.

Eleanor had been at her research longer than she realized. The knock on the door was a clipped, brief rap and then the door opened just as quickly, as if it had not been a request for entry but rather a not-exactly-rude warning that the knocker was coming in whether the person inside was ready or not. Like a doctor entering the examination room where his anxious patient sits with legs dangling off the examination table in a paper gown that did not completely cover. Eleanor looked up sharply toward the door, in almost as much anticipation and anxiety as if she was the one waiting in the paper gown, but it was only Dr. Ford. She hurriedly exited the screen and eradicated Dr. L’Esperance from her computer screen, until next time.

“
How did you manage to break away from the reception?” she asked in what she hoped was an offhand demeanor that had masked her genuine curiosity.

“
I didn’t. The reception ended just now. Have you been working all this time? You’re the dedicated one, aren’t you? Much more so than I, but I’ve always admitted that.” He grinned.

“
How was it?”

“
Quite nice, actually. I was expecting something along the lines of that awful quarterly budget luncheon, but this was first class. The champagne was flowing.”

“
Champagne? Good lord.”

“
All too frivolous for you, I know, but I enjoyed it.”

“
You are a butterfly, Cassius. And you’re half drunk, aren’t you?”

“
Don’t be foolish.”

“
Did Dr. L’Esperance stay long?”

“
She was the hit of the party. She cornered a dozen or so of the Committee and had their rapt attention for most of the dinner.”

“
Dinner? Not just hors-d’oeuvres?”

“
Sit down dinner, five course.”

Dr. Roberts swore. Dr. Ford looked amused.

“
Well, why didn’t you come?”

“
I wasn’t invited.”

Dr. Ford’s smile wavered, until it sunk slowly, capsizing under what he had not before realized. Eleanor said it for him.

“
I’m on the out, aren’t I, Cassius?”

Dr. Ford scoffed. But, he took an unconscious half-step backward away from her.

“
Seriously,” she continued, noticing, “Was I even mentioned at this gala affair? Did my name come up at all?”

Dr. Ford stared hard at the countertop.

“
Oh lord,” Eleanor muttered, “You can’t remember. Stunning.”

“
Eleanor, it’s not that,” he replied quickly, with growing irritation, “I’m hesitant to jump into something I don’t understand.”

“
What the hell are you talking about?”

“
This business between you and Dr. L’Esperance. I can understand professional jealously, but I don’t get why she would want to change your profile and scuttle this mission mid-course. That’s what you suspect, isn’t it?”