The Armageddon Blues | Page 7

a small stretch of gravel, who was looking back at him with very silver eyes, and suddenly he was more in love than he had been since the age of nineteen.
You know, that was in 1731.
Dateline 1969 Gregorian.
Ralesh d'Arsennette y ken Selvren, Eldest Hunter of Clan Silver-Eyes, lay comatose in the hospital that the ambulance had taken her to. The doctors who examined her fully expected her to die. Her entire system was in shock; she appeared to have suffered radiation burns of some sort.
Her personal effects the doctors found vastly strange; a white overtunic and white leggings, three knives, and two devices that they found themselves unable to understand in any regard. One of the gadgets looked like a meter of some sort, or a compass; the other looked like a hand grenade. The local police were still debating whether or not they ought to call in the F.B.I., two days after Ralesh had been admitted.
For two days, while the police argued among themselves, Ralesh lay in a coma, a glucose solution dripping slowly into her veins.
On the third day, the silver-eyed freak was gone from her room in intensive care, and her personal effects were missing from storage.
In place of the items that she took, the Eldest Hunter of Clan Silver-Eyes left two things; a male intern and a female nurse. The nurse had been tied and gagged and knocked unconscious. The intern, who had simply not been born the right sex, had his throat cut from ear to ear.
Dateline 1968 Gregorian.
"Walk?" asked Georges blankly. "On the freeway?"
An eighteen-wheeler blasted by them. The wind sent Jalian's hair streaming backward. She nodded silently.
"Walk on the freeway," Georges repeated. He considered the idea. "Where are you headed?"
"Anywhere." Jalian shrugged. "Nowhere. One place seems as good as another, as long as it can be reached over a freeway. The freeways," she added, "the freeways are beautiful."
"What are you?" Georges was staring at her.
Jalian studied him, without meeting his eyes particularly. "I might ask you the same question.... I'm a wanderer. I walk the freeways, and I wait for the fires that you destroyed yourself with. There are," she said with the gravest expression Georges had yet seen on her, "thirty-eight years until Armageddon."
"Thirty-eight ... what do you mean?"
Jalian said abruptly, "I return your question. What are you? You are unlike any male I have ever known. You are much like a person," she said courteously.
"Well," said Georges. "Thank you.... Where are you from? I don't recognize your accent." Jalian's lips parted as though to reply, then closed. She made a gesture of helplessness, and turned to leave. She stopped in the act and said to Georges, "There is a bridge on my map. It is..." She paused, converting time units in her head, "...a fifteen minute walk from here. I will wait for you there, for a little while." She gestured to the car, somehow managing to convey supreme contempt. "Do not come in that, if you come." She began walking without waiting for a reply.
Georges watched the retreating figure for a long time, until she had passed from sight. He was horribly tempted to get back in the car and leave and never be faced with this white-haired woman again.
Georges Mordreaux tended to think of himself as something a cut above the ordinary mortal, almost semi-divine, and it was a fact that Georges tended to awe people. It was strange to find someone who had the ability to set herself up as his equal on their first meeting.
It was a long time before he started after her, on foot.
Behind him, the Camaro's engine began to falter.
Jalian d'Arsennette and Georges Mordreaux stood at the edge of the bridge. A small, nearly dry river passed underneath. Far overhead, a front of dark, rain-heavy cumulus clouds moved toward the bridge. Second by second, its shadow killed the sunlight on the moving water.
"I like bridges the best," said Jalian. Her hands were resting on the guard rail. "There were no bridges on the Big Road, not even any places where bridges used to be." Beneath them, the murmur of the river was barely audible. Georges reached out, and ran one finger along the profile of her jaw. "The first time I came to a bridge, I was almost afraid to cross it."
Georges sighed. "You know I don't have any idea at all what you're talking about?" Jalian did not reply. Georges whispered, "Look at me."
Jalian kept her eyes averted. She was looking at the guard rails of the bridge. The rails were made of iron, and were badly rusted. They reached to Jalian's waist. Jalian ran her hands over the rough metal, as though she were studying the texture and shape. After a long silence she said, "What is your name?"
Georges said, "Georges," absently.