Legend Days Begun by Cabell McLean Question: Is a mutant with the combined abilities of telekinesis and astral projection the evolutionary step from man imprisoned in a physical body to a being made entirely of spirit? He welcomed the sight of the cabin like an old friend. Its back was broken and the wind whistled through chinks between the hoary creosoted logs, but the cabin seemed luxurious after the many wild places in which he had hidden during these last desperate months. He was high in the mountains outside Denver, and he felt the cold deep in his bones and sinews as he slowly climbed the cabin's remnant of stair. A pain gnawed at his side and he had a metallic taste in his mouth. He was tired of running, tired of hiding, tired especially of his pursuers always coming close behind. He had spent many years on the run, enough to know that, for him, the running must soon be, finally, over. This was, as they say, the end of the line. And yet there had been another life once long ago vague indistinct. His memories slowly played out like an old film: sepia photograph of lost child in silver frame on mother's dresser; scream of puma in icy mountain passes; smell of creosote and sagebrush on cold mountain mist. He was too tired to resist the waves of memories that swept along, piling up before his mind.... A childhood in the Colorado sierra, old mission school run by three stern nuns in stained and shabby habits, a single class composed of children of all ages drawn from the surrounding hardscrabble farms, moldering books, clouded, cracked windows, constant numbing cold, an air of hopelessness that even the exuberance of childhood could never fully overcome.... He had been eager to get away from there, eager to escape the cold school, the blighted land, the meager harvests, his grim and silent parents. The Service had seemed the best way then, and he was gratified when the tests they gave him showed he had "special talents." He possessed extraordinary psychic gifts, they told him, and those gifts could be of use in the war.... He became a member of a sombra unit, psychic assassins of the prol Service. One of a seven member cell, he recalled with particular clarity the deadly games they had learned to play at the behest of their masters. They were in his thoughts now endlessly, those sorties. The silver wind had blown cold in his head on black mountain passes, chilling him to the bone each time the cell activated. When they returned, they left the hillsides littered with corpses, frail corporat soldiers killed for the cause. How many times had he watched as they disintegrated in the focused microwave beams with that horrible muffled sizzling sound, not even a cry escaping their lips? The memory touched him again now, cloying, chilling, just as it had been then. Finally he had been able to stand no more. He turned his back on the Service and ran, a deserter. A hunted man, he turned back to the mountains of his childhood to make his escape. At first, he had been just another fugitive in a world at war. He was able to elude them for long periods of time using his special talents. A projection into their camp, a hunter's sensor array sabotaged, perhaps some planted misinformation, and then running, always running away. It had once again seemed almost a game to him. And for a time, things stayed like that; the hunt achieved a kind of equilibrium. But he had promised himself before he deserted that he would not kill again, and keeping that promise meant that he could never take a stand. He had to run, and keep on running, no matter what happened. And then the "game" suddenly turned deadly serious. Perhaps a reward had been offered, or some elite unit had been brought into the chase; he never knew for certain. But it was obvious that new and far more experienced hunters now pursued him with advanced equipment. He found it increasingly difficult to stay ahead of them for even a day at a time. The pattern of pursuit soon became chillingly regular. Each time he arrived in some mountain village where he thought he might be safe for a time, it took only a day or so for the hunters to arrive with their armored hovercraft bristling with antennae and their sensor drones snuffling about. The hunters had grown murderous, too, and they now killed those who harbored him. Sometimes they exterminated entire settlements after he had gone. He no longer dared to even go near the raw and primitive mountain towns and outback farms. This was why he had come to the old abandoned cabin, the memory of a long dead friend drawing him to this final unhappy place where he hoped he might find a few hours of rest before the end came. The silver wind was blowing in his head again, and he saw clearly that escape was impossible: he could run no more, and he would not allow himself to kill. He had done enough killing, enough running. He was through with all of it. In the stillness of the dark and filthy cabin, he whispered to himself a kind of mantra: "Now the days of death are ended, and legend days begun." He saw that there was only one option left. He had to project away one final time, a one way jump with no return. It wasn't much of an chance. There were no guarantees, and the risk of death was quite real. But he knew what would happen if they took him alive, and he preferred death to that. He made his decision then, without hesitation, as calmly as one cuts down a weed. He entered the cabin and sat on the remains of a wooden bed, now crumbling with dry rot. He would not need it for sleep. He sat for several minutes, breathing slowly and evenly, and then began to go through the steps, lowering his conscious mind's activity, relaxing completely, awakening the ability within, that special talent he had developed through long experience. He had first discovered his ability in childhood dreams, had refined it and learned to control the projections through his adolescence. And now, like a favored and much beloved dog, the power waited for him patiently, just at the edge of consciousness.... He smiled inwardly to feel himself rising once again, as he had so many times before. In what had become a familiar ritual, he looked down upon his now comatose body, and bade it a loving farewell. Then he rose up, through the rotting wood rafters and the turf covering the roof, through the cold mountain air and up into the starry night, strangely silent and beautiful in the silver glow that always accompanied this rarified state. He turned eastward and flew into the horizon, where the sun would soon rise. As he flew, he felt all the old feelings of power and control and wonder. But there was also something more this time, something special. Tonight he felt more confident than he had during any previous projection, and he marveled at the feeling, wondering: how can it be that I was so frail and filled with fear? He knew that much of his confidence was due to the drug-like exhilaration that always accompanied projection. But this time the confidence and intuitive wisdom he felt did not ring hollow as it once had. He welcomed the feeling of power and strength that it gave him. He laughed at himself again for letting fear blind him. The solution was indeed within reach; and it was so obvious, so simple a child could understand! All he had to do was sever the line that bound him to the physical world. All he had to do was break the tether! Such an action would have been unthinkable before. He had been taught, and had always believed, that breaking the tether during a projection would mean death. But now he felt intuitively that it could not be so. He instinctively grasped that his spirit, his spark, was stronger than the poor and frightened form of his starving, exhausted body, that the energy would survive without his body. He saw that he had always secretly longed to be rid of his physical form, that he had unconsciously fought the urge to fly up and away and never return during previous projections. To this realization was melded his desperate need to escape capture, and together these thoughts compelled him to a sudden and unquestioned belief that this was the only way for him to go. As if in response to this thought, he suddenly felt a slight tug at the back of his neck, just where the tether was joined to his skull. His concentration began to slip at the same time, and he saw with amazement the unmistakable signs of projection decay: his altitude and speed started to drop, at first slightly, but then faster and faster. Soon he was plummeting across the sky in a great arc, back the way he had come, back down into his body! He struggled to regain concentration, above all to calm himself, for he knew that panic would only help his enemies, just as he knew that his enemies had somehow found his body. They were there now, he knew, and they were dragging him down back to the physical realm! He had the odd sensation of being a fish on a line held by a malevolent angler, and he fought against the hook just as hard as any fish would fight. He could even feel the constant tug-reel-tug-reel of the hated fisherman below. He twisted and jumped at the end of the tether forgetting himself completely in panic and fear, as desperation cut deeply into his power and control. Leaping, twisting, running like a great phantom fish in the sky, he inevitably began to tire, and soon he had no more strength remaining. He now felt the constant, inexorable pull of the tether, the tether that tied him to the earth like a chain. He had always blessed the tether before because it was his lifeline within the strange dimension, his way back to the warmth of human life, and he had wanted to return then. But now he cursed the tether and wished he could... he could... Suddenly he realized what he must do. He looked down the length of the tether against which he strained and saw them gathered around his body in the cabin. They had their loathsome machines with slick red wires attached here and there to his head and neck. The wires looked like parasitic worms pulsing with electric life. They stared dumbly at the glowing terminals of their machines, oblivious to his presence above, as if by thus insulating themselves from their victim they hoped to be once removed from their own acts of violence and murder. They were no longer even human to him. He saw them now for what they were: little more than "talking monkeys," highly skilled at operating their intricate toys, yes, but no more aware of their inner spirit than the lowest animal. In that moment he pitied them, and felt the sublime and limitless power that accompanies such a pure and liberating emotion. He reached out a phantom hand toward the tether. He had never tried to touch the tether before, and so was surprised to find that it vibrated with life energy, that it sparkled with a strangely cold blue light. He shut phantom eyes as his hand closed around it and pulled.... Suddenly everything was rushing past him in chaos! The tether, against which he had strained so uselessly before, had dissolved instantly the moment he touched it with the firm intention of breaking free. He had pulled so hard that he actually catapulted himself away from the shining surface of reality, and up into the unknown void beyond. Finally, after a long struggle, he managed to regain control, and he turned back to see the cabin, now far away. It was in chaos, the "monkeys" running back and forth in panic and confusion, screaming at each other in a language now utterly foreign. He had escaped their world at last, and he was free! He turned away now from his former home, as one would turn from a disgusting, rotted corpse. He could do no more good for the dying planet, and he longed now for greater challenges. He turned his mind outward, as a child to a new world of wonder and possibility. The limitless void beckoned him with sparkling lights of rare hue. And so on he flew, out into the night, following the track of the brilliant and beautiful stars. <END> © Copyright 1999 by Cabell McLean