The Armageddon Blues | Page 8

The breeze was blowing her long, silky hair toward him. His hand dropped from her chin, and tentatively, he ran his fingers along its surface. Jalian shivered, and brushed his hand away.
Georges said, so softly that his voice could not have been heard more than a meter away, "Je ne sais quoi. What am I to do about you?"
"Georges what?"
"Eh?"
"Is Georges all there is?" Jalian persisted.
Georges leaned back against the railing, not looking at her. Where Jalian's hand had touched the rail, the rust was smeared faintly. Small patches of clean steel began to appear with creeping slowness. "Mordreaux," said Georges finally. "Georges Mordreaux."
Jalian straightened and brushed her hands off on her white jumpsuit. Her hands left faint orange splotches behind. "My name is Jalian. Jalian of the Fires of the People with Silver Eyes in the long form." She moved closer to him, and lightly touched one of his hands with one of her own. "Does your name mean anything?"
Georges shook his head no. He was more aware of her touch than of any other physical contact with a woman that he could recall in all his long life. "Not that I know of." With the hand that hers was not covering, he touched her chin. He would have turned her to meet his eyes; before he could do so she looked up of her own accord
/self. life is calm power running through deepquiet channels worn smooth. control is necessary and uncertain./
/self. most alone. rivers of black concrete freeze in grief, melt in fire. there are thirty-eight years until Armageddon./
and Jalian's desolate grief and aloneness slashed through Georges as though it were his own.
Jalian's voice trembled. "How old are you?" Her eyes were averted again.
"Two ..." Georges licked his lips and said, "Two hundred and fifty years old. About."
Jalian turned slightly away from him, so that even by accident she could not meet his eyes. "I think I had better leave." She took a step away from him, turned, and took another before Georges found words.
"No." Jalian froze. Georges Mordreaux said in silverspeech, "I am not Ralesh and I am not ghess'Rith. I am myself, and I will never hurt you."
Jalian started to speak, and her voice broke on the first word. She had to begin again. "All of the people I have ever loved, Georges, they have wanted me to be things other than what I was; things other than what I could be. I ..." She seemed at a loss for words.
Georges shrugged. "I know what you are. I know you as well as you know yourself. And I'm more objective about it."
"The ending of things..."
"Is not your fault," he said mildly. "Jalian, when you left your own time you meant to change things for the better--"
She interrupted him. "I am not sure that it can be changed. Georges, it happened."
"Oh, to be sure," agreed Georges cheerfully. "It happened once. Need it happen twice?"
Jalian's voice was steady. "What do you mean?"
"The nature of time," said Georges solemnly, "is a mystery to the best of us." He paused. "Einstein said that to me, the one time we met."
"I do not understand."
"Second Precept of Semi-Divinity," said Georges, "is ‘Don't Worry About It.'"
"I shall not worry about it, then," said Jalian hesitantly, "but ... who is Ine-stine?"
"Well," said Georges comfortably, "that's rather a long story. You see ..."
They walked away down the freeway together.
In the spot they had vacated, for five meters in either direction, the iron railings were completely free of rust.
And so it came to be that Jalian d'Arsennette and Georges Mordreaux walked the freeways of the world together, for a while.
Let us note, here, the two Precepts of Semi-Divinity:
(1) Mind Thine Own Business.
(2) Don't Worry About It.
The alien gods came to Earth in the early part of the twenty-eighth century, as measured from the death of a man who was nailed to a tree for telling people that it was all right to love each other.
Their landing craft dropped out of a clear blue summer sky, and set down on a strip of what appeared, to them, to be a sort of primitive road. They sought for the civilization that would produce such a road, and found nothing.
They were not surprised, these alien gods. They had seen other deathworlds; they recognized the signs. If they were surprised in any degree, it was only by the obvious recency of the cataclysm; the previous owners of this world had destroyed themselves less than a cycled running cycle ago.
The alien gods--the Corvichi spacetime gypsies--set down to work. The Ship that was their world was in trouble. Biosphere degradation, resource depletion, failing machinery; they had traveled a long, long way around the Great Wheel of Existence, had braved the Chained One and Chaos itself, and much of their equipment was designed