The Trouble With Heroes.... (7 page)

“
The fixers near the equator
encountered more.”

She sipped her tea then pulled a face at the
bitter taste and put it aside. “What was it like? Your
blighter.”

"We don’t have words for it. ‘Blighter’ still
has that touch of a joke. Cheeky blighter, jammy blighter.
Hellbane’s too formal. Nothing captures the sense of the alien that
screeches against everything we know to be real, that tries to
latch on to dreadful parts of our brain that shouldn't be there.
But are."

Jenny shuddered in recognition.

"Then there's the awareness of ravening
hunger, of a blind need to consume. Us. That we are nothing more to
it than a food source. Like a cow, or a fish, or a loaf of bread."
She saw the shudder shake him. "And that's just a start. You have
to be there."

"No. I know what you mean."

His look was quick and sober. "Then I'm
sorry."

She pushed back the sick feeling. "There has
to be something we can do. What about wild magic? What can it
do?"

He reached out to the fire. She saw him
hesitate, but then he grabbed a glowing end of wood and held it,
flames licking through his fingers. She gasped, but then he dropped
it to blow on a burn. “Good job I’m a fixer.”

She wanted to laugh and cry. She wanted to
hug him and keep him safe. She wanted someone to hug her and
promise her that everything was going to be all right.

"Pathetic," he agreed, "but this is all we
have to fight with. It's at the heart of Gaia, and somehow we’ve
harnessed it in people like us to fight the blighters.”

She turned it around in her mind. "So the
blighters ash people and get the energy from them. You zap them
with wild magic, which is sort of like ashing them. Where does
their energy go?”

“
Into us. Into the fixer on the spot.
It’s a battle of energy, both sides trying to drain the other, but
the fixer always wins.”

Jenny looked at the statue. “And if the
victim’s not a fixer, it’s just a big slurp.”

“
That’s it.”

“
So why are the blighters winning now,
especially if the fixers zapping them are getting all their
energy?”

“
Because we get back less than we use.
Imagine I carry ten units of power. I need two to zap a blighter,
and then I get one back. With a bit of recovery time, I’m back up
to ten. But if I have to zap one after another after another I'm
soon down under two and a blighter ashes me."

"But you’d be so low on energy. Not much of a
meal."

He shook his head. “A juicy one. I’d have all
the usual energy of a body plus a bit of wild magic. It’s been
clear for ages that blighters find fixers particularly tasty. There
have been experiments. Usually a blighter goes for the biggest
animal. The most energy, we assume. Put a cow and a fixer in the
same area and the blighter will go for the fixer first. I’ve been
thinking that might have been our big mistake. We nurtured the
fixing ability and then concentrated powerful fixers at Hellbane U.
That was located where the blighters were more common for training
purposes, but it created a feast. Once the dinner bell went off
they had a rapid start and could soon overwhelm the defenses.”

“
Because no one fixer was going to be
able to kill more than nine blighters in a row.”

“
That was just an analogy, but
yes.

Something was teasing at her mind. "Do you
need two units? If you only used one you’d be even. If you used
less, you’d be ahead.”

He tossed the remains of his tea to hiss on
the fire. "There’s a thought, but we’re not trained in subtlety. We
see an ant and swing a mallet.”

“
It’s a shame they attack one on one. A
mallet against a bunch of ants…. Well, that’d still be pretty dumb,
but you get the idea.”

“
Yes, and it’s worth thinking about.
I've suggested that all the fixers left gather at Hellbane U to try
to come up with a solution. Something new. There has to be
something."

"You have?" she asked.

"No one else seems to be in charge."

She remembered that he’d said that. She took
his hand. "I'm proud of you."

"I’m groping in the dark."

"No, you’re not. You’re finding lights."

He rested his head against hers. “You give me
strength, Jen. When things were tough at school I used to think of
you, that protecting Gaia meant protecting you.”

Tears filled her eyes. “I’m not worthy of
that.” She unfasten the few buttons he'd done up. “I’m sorry for
not doing this sooner. I was scared.”

“
So was I.”

“
I mean, of you. Of your
magic.”

He slid his hand under her top. “Why not? It
terrifies me.”

They kissed, and love came slowly, gently
this time. Not hard, wild, and desperate, but like a secret flower
in a winter garden, unexpectedly discovered and to be guarded from
a killing frost until it bloomed.

They lay together afterward, talking over
their lives as if creating a garland to treasure. As dawn touched
the sky, she said, "Can I come with you?"

"God, no. Go north."

She thought of lying, but shook her head.
"Win or lose, it doesn't matter, and I'd rather be here."

"You're a stubborn woman, Jenny Hart."

"There's more to life than living, Dan
Rutherford. I'll be here to meet you or the blighters, whichever
comes first."

They dressed, then sat, holding hands,
looking into the dying fire.

"I've never been one for the old Earth
religions,” Jenny said, “but perhaps I'll pray."

"Pray for a bouncing bomb, then."

"What?"

He shook his head. "Just something from an
old film."

When the sun rose she helped him kill his
fire and pack, then walked with him hand in hand to the southern
gate.

She cradled his face and kissed him,
determined not to cry. "Come back. That's an order."

He smiled. "If I possibly can. I’ve coded my
place to let you in. Keep an eye on it for me."

He hesitated only a second more, then walked
up to and through the small, pointlessly guarded postern gate.

Chapter 5

Jenny watched the gate close, then turned
back into the quiet town. She walked to the old building, and put
her hand on the plate.

The door opened.

Despite the night they’d shared, she felt
like an intruder. Or perhaps she was afraid that people would
realize what had happened. She wasn’t ashamed of it, but it was
delicate, not for public attention.

He'd left everything neat. Nothing
unnecessary out in the kitchen. Nothing in the fridge or larder
that might go off. His bed was made, his clothes all clean and put
away.

She flicked her way along the hangers just to
touch things that had touched him, enjoying the hint of him that
lingered even after laundry soap. At the left side, almost out of
sight, she found some clothes that stirred memories.

She dragged them forward. A yellow shirt, a
pair of striped trousers, and a red jacket. Gaudy fashions of ten
years ago, now outgrown. Dan's favorite clothes from before he'd
left Anglia. Tears escaped, because they showed how much he hadn't
wanted to leave, hadn't wanted to be marked as different.

She pulled out the red jacket and huddled
into it.

Wearing it, she wandered into the living
room. He'd mentioned films. Had he left his system open to her,
too? She sat on the sofa and clicked it on. He had. She pulled up
his menu and there were the war films he'd talked about, but the
last thing he’d opened had been audio.

S
ir Winston
Spencer Churchill,
the title read.
Speech on Dunkirk, June 4th, 1940.
(Radio with
sim.)

She clicked on it, and a gravely voice spoke
as if the man was right there. Dan had switched off the sim and she
left it like that, hearing it as it had first been transmitted.

At first the flat delivery seemed ponderous,
but then it began to shiver down her spine.

"...we shall fight on the beaches, we shall
fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in
the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never
surrender."

The man spoke as if surrender was an
impossibility, as it certainly was here on Gaia, but she heard the
tone of one who tastes the ashes on the wind.

He'd won his war

Had Dan found hope in that?

When the speech ended, he scanned the list of
films in the system and clicked on one from that war -- World War
II, a concept that had boggled her until now. She watched it Reach
for the Sky, hugging the jacket closer; watched the pilot be
victorious; watched him lose his legs, then take to the air to
fight again. And without fixing.

She understood what Dan had drawn from that.
She didn't like it, but she understood it.

She moved on to
Lawrence of Arabia
.

She didn't move into Dan's flat -- there'd be
too many questions -- but she spent most of her spare time there,
watching the films, absorbing what he'd found in them, using the
lessons to keep going as the town emptied around her and the
blighters came closer on the wind.

Keep going during the blitz. Don't let the
enemy get you down. Keep a song in your heart. We'll meet again.
Wave a white feather. She even made herself a red poppy to wear. No
one knew what it meant, and she wasn't sure herself.

Red for courage?

Red for blood?

She stopped running the Angliacom cells
because even though the news was grim, it wasn't nearly as grim as
the messages in her mind. She used a Keep-Calm patch and went to
work for something to do. Paperwork, it seemed, never entirely
stopped.

Then one day she awoke to realize that
something had changed. A lightening. A lessening of pressure.

She clicked on Angliacom. There was no
reporter. Instead the screen was showing a still, tourist-style
picture of Hellbane U up in the mountains on a perfect, sky-blue
day. Across the bottom ran:
New in from
our brave fixers at the front. The spread of hellbanes has been
halted. The wave has been turned, and ultimate victory is in
sight
.

Jenny watched it five times, joy building,
and then dashed to the Merrie to see if anyone knew any
details.

They didn't, but they were all close to
delirious anyway. There would have been a wild party if anyone had
been there to spark it. As it was, it was wild enough. Tom and Yas
were still around, and he and Jenny played rollicking songs. They
even played the anthem again and some people sang it in tears.

Most of these people were packed and ready to
flee not just Anglia, but Gaia. Now they had hope. They drank round
after round of toasts to the fixers, especially to Dan Fixer, their
own hero. Time after time Jenny and Tom were asked if they'd heard
from him, as if he were on holiday.

She hadn’t heard from Dan, and he’d not
called his family, either. She didn't think the blighters could
knock out com-towers, so there must be some other reason.

The most obvious one was that he was dead. It
was a fear she lived with day by torturous day, consoling herself
that no news was good news. If any of the fixers died, someone
would inform the family.

Anyway, he must be very busy. Whatever the
fixers were doing could leave no time for social calls.

Now, though, with the tide turned and victory
to hand, that would change. Hellbane U would get back to normal.
There’d be contact, organization.

A listing of the dead.

She slipped away, slipped home to sit in
front of the screen, set on max, showing ten different cells.

There were maps on most, showing where the
blighters had been stopped. The blighted area was still an
appallingly huge belt around the planet, and the closest edge was
only fifty miles south of Anglia.

Talking heads, but when she switched each to
audio none had solid information. She muted all, but set the sys to
alert her of any mention of Dan Fixer. Then she fell asleep.

She woke to see the screen flashing on one
cell that showed an excited woman mouthing silently, an exhausted,
bald man behind her. A fixer? Jenny hunted, cursing, for the
clicker, finding it down the side of a cushion, and turned on the
volume.

"...here at the front, as they call it. My
friend here assures me I'm safe." The stocky reporter grinned, but
she looked tensed to run at a word.

For some reason she was dressed in a dull
green shirt and trousers that looked vaguely like the army uniforms
in the old films. Jenny snorted. Fat lot of good that would do her
if a blighter came along. The woman chattered on, not really saying
anything because there wasn't anything to say. Behind her lay
peaceful, normal countryside.

"So," she said, turning to the man -- flabby,
middle-aged, grim, "you think this is the turning point of the war,
Jit Fixer?"

"We're getting the upper hand."

It was direct, but the flat tone made Jenny's
heart pound. No jubilation at all.

"Can you tell Gaia how you've managed to turn
the tide, Jit?"

The man's eyes shifted for just a moment.
"It's very technical," he said, then went on about concentration of
powers, of nodes and impacts and strategic distributions of
forces.

Jenny wondered if she was hearing Dan’s
theories put into practice. That would mean he was alive, wouldn’t
it? She sat glued, praying for a mention of his name despite
knowing how unlikely it was.

There had been -- what? -- five thousand
fixers or so before the Blighter Wars started.

But Dan had said he'd been the one to gather
the remaining fixers. He might be important enough to get a
mention. No such luck. The reporter, glassy-eyed, brought the
technical ramble to an end, wished the fixer success in the fight,
and returned the screen to the "your local station."