========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996 21:33:10 -0500 Reply-To: Sandra1012@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Sandra McDonald Subject: Lay Down Your Sword 1/8 Author's Notes: Not my everything. You know that. This is part of a loose series of stories I talked about in "Epicenter." Background info is in "Epicenter," "Choices After Evil" and "Epilogue: Studies in Light" but it's not necessary. Now, I didn't make up this "There can be only one" stuff, but I'm bound to stick to it. Remember, it's not over until it's over. Comments, criticisms, goofs, typos, all to me please! Lay Down Your Sword by Sandra McDonald sandra1012@aol.com London European Community, United Kingdom Division 2435 A.D. Amanda stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of the hotel room, gazing at the dirty Thames flowing below. She remembered once, maybe eight or nine hundred years before, when the winter had been so cold that the river had frozen nearly solid. She remembered the winter fair on the ice, the tents and sports and frivolity. She remembered what winter had been, before the earth's climate changed and made London a year-round hothouse. From where she stood she could see thousands of pedestrians moving slowly through the normal crowds, umbrellas protecting them from the torrential rain. When they looked up, she knew, they wouldn't see her. MacLeod had picked a hotel with a fashionable new invisibility shield that came off and on during the day, delighting spectators. "Let me get this straight," she said to the people behind her, without turning around. "You want me to break into a monastery to seduce some young Immortal so he'll run away to Sanctuary with us." Duncan MacLeod glanced uneasily towards Tsaganis, but the blind Immortal in the corner showed no sign of alarm. Or of anything else, for that matter. His normally inscrutable expression beneath locks of blond hair hadn't changed. The sensor scan and damper in his palm, then, were doing their job and keeping this particular conversation from the prying ears of SIDI. "Yes," MacLeod said. Holland Greer, beside him, tightened her grip on his hand but said nothing, her eyes wide and solemn on Amanda. Amanda's eyes focused on a small demonstration going on below in Charring Cross Memorial Park. She could see the bright green and yellow flags of Free Wave protesters, and then the inevitable crush of police to stop them. The park, built on the site of the Underground station that had been destroyed during one of the food riots and massacres of the unbearably hot summer of 2189, was a favorite Free Wave spot. She turned from the window, unable to watch. Almost sixteen hundred years old, she still projected a vitality and vigor that attracted MacLeod like a magnet. The death of her mortal husband Tristan, gone to dust just eighteen months now, had marked her with a graveness that only heightened her beauty. MacLeod had loved her for centuries - sometimes intimately, now as a dear friend - but he'd never before needed her as much as he did now. "I have many charms," she said now, with a wry smile, "and I'm not beyond the challenge of a monk. But what's so important about this Jason Sanger? We're not putting classified ads in the newspaper for every Immortal, are we? How many people can Methos fit in his sanctuary anyway?" Tsaganis, who'd been born too late to personally experience newspapers or classified ads, answered crisply before MacLeod or Holland could. "He's not a monk, and the sanctuary can hold enough." Amanda didn't like Tsaganis, and once again considered the enjoyable fantasy of separating him from his young, condescending head. "Jason was a friend of Richie and Felicia," Holland said. On the other hand, Amanda did like Holland, despite the fact the other woman seemed to have won MacLeod's undying love and devotion. There was no missing the soft regret in Holland's voice as she said her mentor's name. Felicia Martins had trained Holland since her very first day. Amanda sobered at the memory of Richie and Felicia. That tragedy, four years past, was a faded but enduring injustice behind her still-fresh sorrow over Tristan. They shouldn't have died the way they did. MacLeod looked away, his jaw tightening at thoughts of Richie. "Still," Amanda persisted, "is he worth it? Switzerland's been good so far, but I hear the borders are becoming impossible." "You don't have to," MacLeod said. "We can try some other way." "That's not the point." Amanda threw herself into a body-molding chair and flicked her gaze to the silent wall screen, where the morning's international reports were scrawling by in silence. "I just want to make sure we've explored every option besides the one where I lose my head to SIDI." MacLeod's face became even more grave. "Jason was badly injured during the Versailles problem. He saw what they did to Richie and Felicia. He doesn't trust any of us. He blames me . . . for being too late. But I owe him this. I owe it to him for Richie's sake." Amanda nodded very slightly. "So, what you're really saying is that this is a personal favor to you." "Yes," he said, firmly and clearly. "Do you want me to beg?" The hotel room nearly shifted out from under Amanda. MacLeod had never begged her for anything. He'd cajoled, once or twice, he'd threatened and bribed, he'd good-naturedly tricked her or made a good faith bargain - he'd once wanted her to steal him a cross, and she had. For Duncan. And now he was willing to beg. The world was surely coming to end, as the doomsday prophets were constantly proclaiming. "All right," Amanda said solemnly. "I'll get you your monk." "He's not a monk," Tsaganis corrected. Amanda ignored him. For two more hours they worked the time-tables and travels arrangements, the schematics and security, the contingency plans and failsafes. Holland and MacLeod would stay in the town of New Stans, below the mountainous perch of the monastery. If she didn't meet them in four days, they would know she'd failed. If she didn't reach Bangkok in ten days, with or without Jason Sanger, they'd go on to Sanctuary without her. Tsaganis was going ahead to be with Methos and Ceirdwyn and the others, as they made their final preparations to withdraw from the beautiful, terrible, heartbreaking chaos the world had become. In the elevator, Amanda wondered more about Jason Sanger. He was thirty years old, four years Immortal, all four spent hiding in a monastery of the order of Cistercians of the Strict Obedience. Somehow he'd managed to survive the atrocities Richie and Felicia had not, in a blood-soaked prison cell in Versailles palace. She was sure there was more about him than Duncan was revealing, but that was just another part of the challenge. >From the window, MacLeod watched Amanda exit the hotel and slip away into the sea of faces below. Over one billion people lived in the chaos of metropolitan London, grown from the first tribes of hunter-gatherers going back ten thousand years. The world now had too many people. Thirty billion sweating, breathing, fighting, waste-producing people. The Ozone Wars, the famines, the riots, the plagues, the severe birth control policies - nothing had stopped the mortals from reproducing themselves to the point of world collapse. But it wasn't the world's overpopulation crisis that made his heart feel heavy and tired in his chest. It wasn't the global warming catastrophes that had turned Miami, Hong Kong, and most of the Caribbean into scuba diving attractions. Instead, it was the intensely more personal heartache of Versailles pulsing back at him, the unending sorrow and injustice that hadn't faded a single fraction in four years. Down in the crowd, he caught sight of a woman whose features sent him into a momentary lift of recognition. She turned her face up to him, although the hotel was currently invisbile and she couldn't have been aware of his scrutiny. Then she was gone, and he remembered that Tessa Noel had been dead for over four hundred and forty years. A trick of genetic heritage had probably bestowed some distant descendent with her loveliness, or a trick of his own imagination had made it seem so. Holland came up behind him and encircled her arms around his waist. MacLeod leaned back carefully against her, and allowed himself the rare luxury of a sigh. "How many lies did we tell Amanda?" he asked softly. "As many as we had to," Holland answered, kissing the back of his neck, and tightening her hold on him with a sorrow all her own. *** On the platform of the Ultrabullet train to Zurich she saw two SIDI agents working their way throughout the crowd. Amanda had no cause to believe they were after her, but no desire to find out, either. She could take a later bullet train, but it would go through France, and France was too dangerous to risk. Amanda edged her way out of sight, focused on a pale looking businessman, and struck up a conversation that got her onto the train, into his compartment, and from London to Zurich in just under 2 hours. In Zurich she rented a pod with credits under someone else's name, and told it her district destination. The computerized transit authority matched her with two other people going that way, and they shared the swift, efficient, machine-controlled mind in polite silence. At the district station she had to rent a private pod for the trip to New Stans, but it gave her a luxurious privacy for the last part of the trip that she thoroughly enjoyed. It had been so much easier in the age of horses. Even automobiles, with their terrible exhaust systems that had poisoned the planet, had offered more independence than pods and trains. Well, Amanda thought dismally, at least she didn't have to worry about it past New Stans. No automated transport existed up to the monastery, and the only outside deliveries they accepted came infrequently, via airpod. She would have to go in on foot. Still, a horse would have been nice. She remembered the time when there had been horses in the world, and dolphins, and whales, and white rhinoceroses. A time before the glaciers melted, sending water to destroy the coasts and cities and edges of continents. A time when there had been room to breathe. Amanda gazed out the pod window and wished, for literally what had to be the thousandth time, that she wasn't a sentimental person. She usually tried to hide it behind witty repartee, or smart defiance, but Tristan had seen through it the first time they'd met and undone her for sixty years of marriage. Tristan. Oh, love. The town of New Stans lay halfway up the slope of the mountain Stanserhorn. The old town lay submerged under the risen waters of Lake Lucerne, along with Altdorf, Gersau, Weggis, Stansstad, Buochs, and a dozen other doomed cities. Lucerne itself had held out the longest, but the floods of melting water down the Alps had finally wrested its gates and barriers to ruins also. Amanda checked into one of the town's small hotels. Switzerland was a Free Wave bastion, and instead of scanning her retinal print the clerk gave her an old fashioned key, heavy and solid in the palm of her hand. The hotel wasn't as prehistoric as to not have I-mail, and a message was already waiting in her room queue. "Good luck with your writing!" it read. "May the timeless beauty of the Alps aid your creativity. Love, Paul and Millie." Duncan and Holland. They were in town, and everything was still on track. Amanda flopped down on her bed and reviewed her plans. She went out only once, for dinner. On the way back she retrieved the sword Duncan had left for her under a park bench. Traveling without her sword always made her extremely nervous, but there'd been no way to get it past the security sensors at the transit stations. The next morning, shortly after daybreak, she checked out of the hotel and hiked up the mountain with only a small backpack for provisions. The mild February weather hovered with temperatures in the mid- fifties on the ancient Fahrenheit scale as she climbed, and her exertions soon had her sweating beneath the dark nylette of her jacket and trousers. The little-used path went back and forth through dying forests, past jagged boulders and sheer inclines, up, up, up, three thousand feet, and she cursed whoever's bright medieval idea it had been to build the Gethsemani monastery at the very top of the mountain. The ground beneath her boots was soggy with water that drowned the grass, the trees, the other natural growth. The mud was treacherous, and after breaking her right ankle in a nasty fall she took the opportunity while it healed to down some nutrition pills and gaze at the splendid valley below. By mid-afternoon she was safely ensconced in a reasonably thick copse of trees four hundred yards beneath Gethsemani's north wall, and she settled in a high vantage point in an old oak to wait for nightfall. Through her binoculars she carefully observed the monastery. It had been built at the very top of the mountain, and rose seamlessly from the sheer incline around it. A low gated wall, gray and ancient but sturdy, ran around its sizable compound. A five story medieval fortress rose behind the wall with slits as windows that looked blankly down the slopes. It would never win any awards for aesthetics, and looked like it would be unbearable in whatever winter was left here. From somewhere behind the main building came woodsmoke, and she knew from MacLeod's maps that the kitchens, stables, and gardens were also within the wall. Gethsemani was capable of cutting off all contact with the world, although it hadn't. She wondered if Methos had ever considered it as a home for his Sanctuary. The sound of men singing in Latin rose through the peaceful afternoon air, and Amanda checked her watch. The Trappists believed in choir offices seven times a day. Two o'clock meant this service would be None. Amanda's Latin was fairly rusty, but she could pick out a few words. Men singing about God, high on the rooftop of the world, their voices surprisingly good. Maybe Jason was with them, unaware of the plans and plots to save him from himself. She hated waiting, but there was nothing else to do. Vespers came at 5:30 p.m.. A short time after it ended she saw three of the monks come out the main gate in their white habits and sandals. They walked peacefully, silently, although Amanda knew the Trappist vows of silence had been greatly reduced through the centuries. The monks seemed deep in thought as they walked and watched the spectacular sunset edging the western sky towards thick ribbons of pink, purple, and gold. She wondered again why men would choose to lock themselves away from the rest of the world, and decided it must be because the world had hurt them very badly. Visions of herself as a nun were quickly squelched. Amanda enjoyed the world too much. She enjoyed being part of it, even if it brought terrible sadness like Tristan's death. And she didn't believe in a God for Immortals, who were destined to hack and chop at each other in an eternal quest for heads and Quickenings. The monks returned from their walk without ever having come near her position. The last choir office of the day was Compline, at 7:30 p.m., by which time the sky was completely dark and the temperature had dropped considerably. Amanda knew most of the monks would soon be fast asleep in bed. They had little other choice - the singing, praying and whatever else they did would begin again at 3:00 a.m., surely an ungodly time if ever there was any. She planned to be in Jason Sanger's bed by that time, persuading him to leave with her. Shortly after nine p.m. she scaled the monastery's low wall and dropped soundlessly into the darkened compound. The canopy of stars overhead provided the only light, but it was more than enough for her eyes. In the compound behind Gethsemani's main building she found everything she expected, including a smaller, rectangular structure that was home to the novices and infrequent guests. Breaking into the novice house was a little harder, because it had been locked from the inside with a deadbolt. She resorted to climbing up the side of the building with micro-grips in her gloves and boots, prying open the roof trap door, dropping down through a cleared-out attic, and making her way along the closed wooden doors of the second floor passage until she found the room MacLeod had said was Jason's, and felt through the door the unmistakable buzz of another Immortal. The door was unlocked. Amanda rapped ever so softly, then eased it open into the small cell. A man's silhouette in bed sat up, his features and details too dark to see. "Jason?" she asked. Something dropped from above, whacking her soundly on the back of the head. Amanda staggered and then collapsed to her knees, the world spinning out beneath her with sickly flashes of red across her vision and bile rising to the back of her throat. She tried to pull out her sword but her fingers were lifeless, and the first horrible thought to clear her muddy mind was that SIDI had found her. Or their sadistic predecessors, the Hunters, but the Hunters had been extinct for nearly three hundred years. She felt a second Immortal, then a third, but saw them only as blurry figures coming up the passage behind her with swiftness and silence that seemed inhuman. They dragged her upright, one with his hand firmly clasped over her mouth to keep her from screaming. The second - a woman, Amanda realized in surprise - took her sword. Amanda's head was already healing, her strength returning, but she didn't fight them. She focused instead on the man in the bed, who reached over and lit a small kerosene lamp on the bench beside his narrow bed. Amanda recognized him instantly. If this was Jason Sanger, than Duncan certainly had a great deal of explaining to do. "Hello, Amanda," Connor MacLeod said grimly. end of part one "I love being a writer, it's the paperwork I can't stand" - Unknown