WARNING!!
This story contains a huge amount of pain. It was written on
February 15, 2002, when Kevin Smith was near death in a hospital in
China. This was an alternative ending to my GAMES series on
Andromeda Uncovered -- but after Kevin's death I decided to instead
write the uplifting story SPIRIT AND FLESH. Still, I like
this story and so I decided to put it on my webpage to share with
whoever might want a "down story" on a down day.
WHEN
GODS DIE
Why, in the name of all that holy does it have to be me that tells him?
I hardly know the man. I could tell Dylan, he's going to have to know,
too, and Dylan could tell him. He respects. . . Evan Hopewell glared up
with a look of disbelief and defiance.
The older man
standing before him shook his head. "Dylan already knows. How do you
think I found out? You know it's your job, Evan."
"My job, my
fucking job, oh excuse me, is that of a librarian. I read books. I
catalog books. I buy books. I restore books. My job has absolutely
nothing to do with either of them. Why should I start taking orders
from you now? Why am I the one who has to fucking tell him."
Evan tried hard
to control his rage. He looked back down at the book before him, a
beautifully illuminated version of French fables, and closed the cover
quickly. The tears that were welling in his eyes could do serious
damage to the paper -- he pushed the tome away -- and to the leather
cover.
Malcolm, a
fellow librarian he had seen around for centuries and never really
spoken to before that afternoon, stood patiently waiting for his tears
to clear. Evan had been shocked, when shortly after his return to Libra
X, Malcolm had come to his quarters and told him the story of what had
happened the last few hours, including details Evan had never even
suspected. But it was not over his ignorance that he was now crying; he
was crying for things lost, only one of which was a friend.
"Go ahead and
cry. We all cry when we realize we are not truly immortal."
"But why now,
after how many, five-, six-, seven-thousand years, and why me. How did
I get involved in this anyway."
"He trusted you.
He respected you. He in his own perverted way loved you."
"That's bullshit
and you know it. He loved himself. He loved that fucking king who
killed him. And maybe, just maybe, he loved Tyr. We talked now and
then." Malcolm's face did not react. He maintained a superior and
disinterested attitude, perhaps as a shield.
" OK, we fucked
two or three times. I needed something. I thought he was the only one
who could help me. I was willing to ... oh fuck, you I hope you are not
doing this just to hear gory details about my sexual proclivities.
You're not that perverted, are you?
"But I am not a
part of his life," Evan continued, "I just happen to live in a parallel
life -- I'm sorry, but I don't want to get involved now."
* * * * *
"What do we tell
people? Who do we tell?" The Perseid said as he knelt over the broken
and bloody body. "This hasn't happened in so long, I've forgotten how
we handle it."
"Sure hasn't,
ever since those Highlander guys stopped chopping off each other's
heads believing there could be only one. That was a stupid, if
intriguing game. Glad none of my sons or lovers got involved with those
games. Just help me get him inside. I agree, Linc, I need to refresh my
memory, too." They dragged the body into Malcolm's room and once again
checked it for life signs. There were none. There couldn't be any, not
in his condition. He was dead.
"It has to be
written down somewhere. Everything is written down somewhere. I'll
check if you want. I'll leave you here with him."
"He looks
peaceful, eyes closed. I want to remember him the way. Don't turn him
over. I don't want to see."
The older man
could no longer keep his composure. His son was dead. He'd had other
sons die over the ages, sons he probably loved more. He hadn't talked
to this son for thousands of years. In fact, he was certain that this
son, like most of the universe's population, had thought he was dead.
He was totally shocked that the son he now knew as Dylan had known
otherwise and brought his body to him.
This son was the
god of war. The name people called him had changed over the years; it
had been respelled and redefined with references to technology, yet the
doubt of his existence never decreased. Even in times of peace people
knew he was there. There could only be true peace, if he was there.
"I suppose we
should tell someone. Does anyone else really care? Other than here, on
this planet?" Linc looked at Malcolm to see the old man had an answer.
"I wish I could
say 'not really', but someone is going to have to tell Tyr."
"Why would a one
armed Norse god care about his Greek counterpart?"
"Not that Tyr,
dimwit, Tyr Anasazi, his lover."
"I thought his
lover was King Iphicles. Has been for thousands of years. When did he
change? Why did he change?"
"I suppose that
was what he thought, just before the force-lance went off and blew the
back of his head. I've never seen injuries like this."
* * * * * *
Dylan Hunt kept
flicking the button on his high-guard force-lance. It would extend and
retract, like it had hundreds of times in the past. It had always been
there, ready for him to use. He had learned to depend on it, as if it
were an extension of himself. It was weapon crafted for the most
skilled of soldiers; a weapon that should have brought peace to the
universe.
'A four-foot
long fucking penis. What in the hell was it good for? Why would anyone
want to carry such an instrument.' Dylan wanted to break it over his
knee like a staff or a limb from a tree. The once beautiful instrument
seemed too ugly and so deadly.
He should have
taken comfort in that fact that his crew was safely back on the
Andromeda. King Erik had made it home safely, as probably had Evan
Hopewell. He knew Tyr suspected something when he gave him the key to
Storage Area 15, but he hoped the primal feeling of being with his
progenitor would ease him through the next few hours. It was going to
be difficult.
He had seen both
bodies. The two men who looked so much alike in life laying side by
side in death. One little more than ashes and burned bone, to be
sprinkled in an ocean, or a garden, or placed in a small jar. The other
a mass of tangled hair, tooth, bone and brain bound together by blood.
"They were my
brothers." He had cried out, to whom to hear he wasn't sure. He had
finally realized it, and it was too late.
His first
thought was to run, get as far away from this silver planet as
possible, never return, forget what happened here, but then from
somewhere in his clouded mind he knew he had to return the bodies. The
king who was now ash, could be sprinkled in space, the only other
person who had loved him, his mother, had been dead . . . Dylan fought
tears when he thought about her, for she was his mother, too, a mother
he felt but never knew. He knew he loved her though.
The broken body
of the man he knew as Harry, whose name changed with the wind and the
whim, needed to go somewhere, too. He had to hide it from Tyr; he had
to return it to . . .his father. But he knew his father was dead. A
frightening image of holding an old man down and stabbing him in the
heart. The pain that followed. A pain that he couldn't escape. A pain
that was clouded, dimmed . . .
Suddenly he
realized his father had to be alive, and he had a strong feeling that
he knew where he was. It was the only thing that made sense.
* * * * *
"I don't kill
for sex." Tyr remembered saying to him that last night. He remembered
falling asleep in his arms, the first time since he was a child that he
could ever remember falling asleep with the breath of someone who had
just said "I love you" on the back of his neck. He had felt safe and
secure, comfortable and satisfied. He shouldn't have. He had been
stupid. He had been in love.
He did not awake
when his partner has slipped away into the night. He did not realize
the force-lance that was part of the high-guard uniform Dylan had
forced him to wear to this planet was gone. They were supposed to come
to the planet unarmed. He had slipped it in his bag in case it was
needed. It was part of his Nietzschean paranoia. Even then he wasn't
worried, even though now he realized he should have been.
"What in the
hell are you going to prove to me anyway." He yelled at the withered
body in the heavy coffin. "Fucking DNA testing. Why should I give a
shit about your fucking DNA? So what if you return?
"He's not going
to return. He's dead. He can't be dead. He's a fucking god. But I know
he is dead.
"I'm here alone.
I have forsaken my genetic heritage, to love him. Why should I give a
shit about yours?
"Dylan Hunt,
what is it that you know? Why haven't you told me? Why did you instead
smile so sweetly and hand me this fucking key. Do you think I could
find pleasure here? Did you honestly think HE could help me? Why didn't
you at least tell me? How do you think I am going to find out?"
* * * * *
"You've got to
do it, Evan. It's your job." Malcolm had let the librarian cry for what
seemed like weeks or months, but was probably only fifteen minutes.
"I've told you,
it's not my fucking job. Your Zeus for Christ's sake." A faint smile
crossed his face in counterpoint to the tracks of the tears when he
realized the irony of the curse he had just made. "I'm sorry, that was
a stupid thing to say."
"What?"
"My choice of
swear words."
Malcolm extended
his hand. "I understand. It's a bit too much information to process at
one time."
"It shouldn't
be. That's my job. Processing information, not telling someone his
lover is dead. That's not my job."
"So you think I
should go?"
"No, as I said,
I think we let Dylan do it."
"But you need to
be there to give him this." Malcolm produced a small dagger. Evan had
seen in pictures in numerous books, but never really believed it
existed. "Take this and give it to him. Give it to Tyr Anasazi out of
Victoria by Barbarosa. He will know what to do with it." Malcolm
continued to pace, waiting for Evan to make a move.
"And what is
that?"
"This is the
sacred dagger of the Nietzscheans."
"I know that.
What do you think I am fucking stupid? What is he supposed to do with
it?"
"It is the
instrument necessary to make the cut to extract the blood that will
then be matched with that of the mummified body of Drago Museveni and
reveal his identity. Tyr needs to have it?"
"OK, let me go
through this again slowly. It makes no fucking sense. I, Evan Hopewell,
an antiquities librarian, have to go to Tyr on the Andromeda. I have to
face Dylan, who as far as I know is still suffering from his "fuzzy,
soft memories of his own past" and the sight of the two men he finally
recognized as his brothers dead on the ground and tell him I have to
talk to Tyr.
"And I have to
tell him this without stopping to ask him how in the hell he knew where
his father, Zeus, who everyone else in the universe had thought was
dead for the last four thousand years was living. Not stopping to ask
if he really knows he is Hercules. Not having time to discuss why I had
to fuck his two half-brothers in an attempt to hide his memory of the
fact that he was the one who killed, or at least we thought he killed,
you. Why I couldn't be with the one I loved, him? No time for those
things, they don't matter. They just involve Iolaus. I have to talk to
fucking Tyr.
"I have to tell
Tyr that the man he has taken for a lover, forsaking his culture and
genetic heritage, is dead. Killed in a stupid little lover's quarrel
with his long time play toy. Killed because the real god-of-war was too
stupid to know that a high-guard force-lance could only be used by the
person programmed to use it. Killed because he was stupid enough to
throw it down on the floor, in a fit of "mea culpa" to his giga-year
lover. Killed because no one had ever had a force-lance go off while
someone was trying to force it down his fucking throat."
"Then, and only
then, I have to present this dagger to Tyr Anasazi, the last of his
pride, and tell him to use it to cut his hand to reveal that he is the
genetic reincarnation of Drago Museveni. Don't you think that is a bit
dramatic? I think Dylan should tell him. They are friends. I have no
relationship with this man. Why me."
Zeus looked at
the small blonde man. "Because, my friend Iolaus, it's not his hand he
is going to have to cut, it's yours."
McJude
February 15, 2001