As a lesson to him, Ba'alberith had allowed him to dip into an alternate in which he was a fearsome sorcerer, rotting behind a mask in a seven-turreted castle at the edge of a great empire, doing battle with swordsmen, magicians and a leech lady. Seth was whipped through this life in an instant, from a violent clash on a primordial plane to another, fifteen thousand blood-soaked years later, in the heart of his castle. It was over within the blinking of an eye. From this experience, Seth learned the futility of a pure devotion to self. In that life, he had been simply obsessed with his continuing existence, with the gratification of his every whim and impulse. Upon his death, he had left nothing behind him in that universe except dust and bad memories. When he returned to his Earth, to the course of his history, he would be humbled.
He would live purely to do the bidding of the Dark Ones, happy in the knowledge that in his servitude his life would mean something. He was the man born to end the world, and he would leave behind him the void through which the Dark Ones could have access to his physical universe, the predestined site of their Great Tourneys, the killing games from which would emerge the Three Champions of the Night who would join battle with the Nullifiers for the fate of the eternally expanding Empire of the Actual and its infinite number of Shadow Selves.
All this was far in the future, far beyond any physical life he could expect, but he knew he would be present in some altered form at the end of the conflict. From the lip of the funnel, he saw the timelines spiralling away into the Darkness. The culmination of his struggles was within his grasp, and beyond that was the restful blackness of the Nothing that would be the lot of the peoples of the Earth. He would bring them a merciful oblivion, freeing them from the need to endure through another cycle of pain and suffering as the whole story was played out again.
This was the future, he knew; but it was also the past. The Outer Darkness was set sideways against the progress of time…
He stepped back into his body at various points through his long career, reinforcing his original decisions, initiating sequences of action whose consequences would only become apparent as the 20th Century drew to its fiery close. He relived his finest moments, his memories becoming the realer as he sped through them, cannonballing through his own life towards the Nguyen Seth who waited in his tank in Salt Lake City.
Back in the world, he was possessed by the needs of his flesh, and took the time to satiate himself before gathering the Twelve Elders of Joseph in the Central Chamber of the Tabernacle.
Back on the lip of the funnel, the Jibbenainosay gathered itself, the alien matter of a hundred universes concentrating in the centre of its cloud, vast discharges of world-shattering electricity signifying its thought processes.
Seth had taken a tendril of the Jibbenainosay with him to the world, and now he would have to pull the whole being through the funnel, and turn it loose. As he strode through the corridors of the Tabernacle, Roger Duroc at his side, Seth felt the ache in his gut where the tendril ended in a diamond-hard fragment of concentrated matter.
The hurt was growing as the Jibbenainosay squeezed itself towards reality, lusting titanically for the destruction of its adversary……of its Ancient Adversary.
V
A clawed hand reached into his dream, and shook him awake.
Hawk-That-Settles started up in his cot, the blanket falling away from his nakedness, and the claw was around his heart, squeezing.
He forgot his dream, but the world he awoke to was nightmare enough.
The room was full of moonlight, and Krokodil was standing there, cloaked by her hair.
He saw a woman, but he felt the presence of a ghost.
She spoke, in her old voice. "Something is coming through," she said. "We must fight again."
He didn't know what to say. He had emptied a bottle before stumbling to his cot. His thinking was muddied by sleep and tequila, and he felt worse than he would have if he'd been kicked in the head by a mule.
She walked over to the bed, seeming to glide, her hair rippling.
She knelt, hair parting over her body as she stretched her arms out to him. Pale in the light of the full moon, she was lovely.
This was part of the story of the Moon Woman. His father had told him many times of the lucky brave whom the Goddess selected as her lover, and of the many heroic deeds he would later perform.
He wanted her—not just physically, his entire spirit wanted to join with this unearthly creature—and yet he was afraid. When her cool fingers touched him, he stiffened, and shrank away, feeling the stone wall behind his back.
She was not offended by hjs reluctance, and slipped easily into the narrow cot, pressing the length of her body against his.
Underneath her hair, she wore nothing.
She kissed him on the lips, passing a little of her cool to him. She wasn't even wearing her eyepatch. His eyes open as they kissed, he found himself looking past her fluttering eyelids, first at her clear, green right eye, alive and intelligent, then at the blue crystal facet of her optic burner, dead and deadly. He shut his eyes, and she sucked his tongue into her mouth. Her hands moved up and down his body, tracing the lines of old sandfighting scars, probing the untidiness under his right lung where his ribs had been broken and set out of true.
He touched her, smoothing her flesh. Krokodil felt different from Jesse. He could no longer feel the machinery inside her, as if it had been digested, truly becoming one with her living tissue and bone. Her skin felt silky and cool like a beautiful snake's, and her muscle tone was superb, no longer that of a soldier but of an athlete, a dancer.
With Jesse, lovemaking had been often hurried, rough. She hadn't known her newfound strength, and often left him bruised or even bleeding. They had found pleasure in sex, but no true union. Had their son been born, his spirit would have been divided against itself, the product of two people too wrapped up in themselves to care fully for each other. Now, with Krokodil, it was different. She was confident enough to take him slowly, to caress and cajole him, to prolong their climaxes. Hawk couldn't think of himself as he moved together with her. The memories that came to him were of her; no, they were hers. She was leaking her past into him, just as she was sipping his spirit…
Jessamyn, Jazzbeaux, Jesse, Frankenstein's Daughter. He loved all the fragments of the person she was still becoming…
…if only, he wondered, he could love Krokodil.
When it was over, they lay awake in each other's arms, their bodies too charged and relaxed for sleep, and Hawk's fugitive spirit returned, plunging him back into himself.
They didn't move. The moonlight fell on their bodies, dappling them as if with a skin disease.
Hating himself for it. Hawk wondered if he was being rewarded, consoled or persuaded.
The moon set, and daylight inched into the room.
"Tonight," she said to him. "It will come. Hawk-That-Settles, you must help me get ready for it."
VI
The Inner Circle sat around the table, nervously waiting. Elder Beach was doodling on a notepad, crosses, goats, and skulls with Josephite hats. Roger Duroc stood by the door as Nguyen Seth walked around the room, taking a full, slow circuit of the table. He seemed to pause momentarily behind each Elder, and to a man they tensed as if expecting a killing blow.
"Brothers," said Seth, assuming his seat. "I have gathered you here to demonstrate that the Path of Joseph is never smooth."
The Elders mumbled in collective agreement. Seth smiled, and adjusted his mirrorshades. He still seemed bleached from his spell in the tank, and the mirrorholes made his face look like a grinning skull.