Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 08:30:36 -0700 Reply-To: Hank Wyckoff Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Hank Wyckoff Subject: (25B/30) Reading the Endtrails -- HL Posting The Cycle of Axer Carrick, Part 4 Reading the Endtrails (25B/30) A continuation of: When the Veil is Lifted The Duplicity Frostmelt Mulroney waited a moment before he opened up the door, "Here she is." Axer nodded. The door opened and led to a large hangar converted into an electrical engineering lab. Some of the instrumentation was as big as a house, whereas a lot of others were very compact and were integrated with personal computers. There was only one person here, the woman that Mulroney had described. Even by looking at her back, Axer knew who she was. He had known her very well, and even in the days when he had a cold and closed heart, he could say that he called her a friend. "Jamie," he whispered, his voice echoing through the hangar. Jamie turned around slowly and deliberately, smiling arrogantly as she faced and recognized him. "So the abomination returns..." Axer blanched at that one, "So I'm an abomination now, am I?" "Not you," she corrected, pointing at Mulroney. "Him. The Irishman." Mulroney shrugged helplessly, "She's right. What can I say?" "Could someone here tell me what's going on here?" Axer was starting to get annoyed. "What do you want to know? You know, of course, that you'll never be able to leave here alive, but while you're here and alive, I'll answer whatever question you ask. Consider it something of a last request." Axer considered. He'd have something to say about when he died if it came down to it, but for now, he'd play her game. "What is your role with the Invisible Ones?" She looked at the floor, but not in shame -- it was more like her particular way of thinking, the same way other put their heads on their chins or scratch their head. Then she looked back up, "I'm something of an independent consultant. They finance my research into electrogravity and supply me with everything I need, just so long as I produce certain items that would be useful to them." "Does your research also involve remote-control chemistry? Like making blood polymerize just by flipping a switch?" "That?" she asked disdainfully. "That wasn't my doing. My work only involved electrogravity!" Axer pulled at his chin, disturbed. He didn't trust her. "And what are the applications involved with your electrogravity research?" "I think you already know the answers." "Then you know I'm thinking the worst... DAMMIT JAMIE!!! HOW THE HELL COULD YOU SELL YOURSELF?!" He stared her in the eye, those tiny muscles along his jaw clenching and unclenching. She looked back at him, unconcerned and unruffled. She started picking at her fingernails, saying nothing. "I would have expected better of you!" Axer continued ranting. "You could have had any appointment you wanted! You could have nailed down any grant you wanted!" She finally spoke, "Yes, I could have played 'the game' and done the respectable thing, but I wouldn't have had the freedom I have now. Here, I'm actually making progress. I don't have to defend myself in front of professional societies that will ignore anything and everything I say unless I've either let the 'big daddies' be first names on *my* papers or let them *@^@ me up the *$$. "Here, I'm respected. I don't have to fight up hill to get anything done, and I'm judged solely on my merits." "Jamie," Axer shook his head, sad and angry, "Jamie, Jamie... It's not like that at all. It *was* that way even twenty years ago, but things have changed. Don't you realize that's the treatment *everyone* gets? You're just being treated like one of the guys now. We all have to get *@^@ up the *$$ to get somewhere in this world." Her look was smugly superior, "Of course -- you're male. You never had to take the second position because of your sex, instead of your qualifications. You were never told to stay out of the professional societies because of your sex, or to accept a sub-standard wage." "You're a spoiled brat!" snapped Axer. "You think you're being oppressed? Why don't you --" Mulroney tapped him rather firmly on the head, "We don't have time for this." Axer grudgingly let it drop, but was about to launch into a full tirade when Jamie's face was dripping with smugness. Fighting against himself, he said, "How did it happen?" "You mean, how did I get recruited? Easy -- I was desperate and in between jobs. The Invisible Ones sent me a letter stuck in a newspaper, asking me to join them, saying that they knew that I was uniquely qualified. When I came here, it was already equipped with everything I needed." Her look was one of heavenly bliss as she exclaimed, "The instruments they gave me would have blown MIT and Berkeley out of the water! I'd never seen anything like them before!" "That's because they weren't on earth before," spoke that 'other' within Axer that Mulroney had seen emerge back at the fence. Mulroney took a step back, uncertainty in his face -- the last thing he wanted was something *totally* beyond his control: things were bad enough as they were. Jamie looked at Axer in shock, not sure what had just happened. "Are your brains packed with wool?" demanded Axer, his gestures wild and emphatic as he slowly walked towards her. "Does not all this tell you something obvious?" "What's obvious?" asked Jamie, her eyes narrowed in confusion. "The fact that you were given heavy bribes and access to instruments that have *never seen the light of the scientific world*! If something *seems* too good to be true, have you never thought that it might *be* too good to be true? There are geniuses on this world, but if there were anyone brilliant enough to come up with that! --" he pointed to a specific instrument as if he recognized it, "--even I would have known about it. His genius would have rocked the world!" Jamie shook her head. Perhaps she understood what lay between the lines, "You're wrong. It's not like that!" The last was a sobbish-scream. "You just can't appreciate my genius! You can't accept the fact that a *woman* is working on a project that you could never touch!" Axer stood still for a moment, and then he seemed to move at light speed as he rushed over to her chair and grabbed her roughly by the throat, lifting her body out of the chair, and slamming her against a mainframe. He slammed her head against it a few times, and let her slide to the ground when she went limp. Mulroney looked a bit scared and made a gamble. "Tesla?" He asked, "Nikola? Is that you?" "Of course it is me! Who else could it be?" Then he stopped and looked around. "But you might want to explain why I am here, and why my body feels so... different." He looked at his hands with an expression of wonder and curiosity. "Nikola? How did you die?" He sneered, "Some federal agents barged into my hotel room and --" he stopped as his eyes widened. "An immortal came for my head. He took my head!" he screamed as the memories came back. "What is happening? I DIED!" "Calm down!" Mulroney ran over to him, trying to quiet him down. "You *did* die, and if the stories I heard about the immortals are right, Axer killed the man who had killed you and taken your quickening. I knew that you were immortal -- my employers told me so -- and I knew that you died under mysterious circumstances, so I figure that had to be the case." He knew what he said to be fact, but he never believed that it was possible to "harness the power of the quickening". For all their talk of power, it seemed that about the only power they gained was a faster healing rate and a stronger sword arm. But now he was beginning to doubt everything he believed he knew. //Could it be possible? I *know* the two never met -- could this really *be* Nikola Tesla?// That staggered Axer/Tesla, who began to display mixed body language, "That is impossible -- I can't -- it cannot -- my soul --" Mulroney's smile was sardonic, "I'm not an immortal, and I'm here after more than a century. Now tell me what's impossible." "But it makes no sense!" Tesla screamed. "Are you telling me that there is no heaven or hell? That my soul is taken up by the one who kills me, and I must be taken by every victor after that? Is there no order or reason?" "You?" snorted Mulroney. "You wanting a reason to life?" "There has to be a reason! Things can't happen randomly! God wouldn't do that to us!" He put his hands to his head and screamed, and when he stopped, he put his hands down, looking around with a confused expression on his face. "What happened?" asked Axer. //Is this insanity?// Mulroney still wasn't sure whether this was real or some elaborate mind game. "You were possessed." "What do you mean?" he looked at Mulroney as if he had claimed he had danced naked on a table, singing 'In Heaven there is no beer.' "I mean what I said. You were talking with her, and then you were suddenly talking in a Croatian accent, and did that to her." He pointed at Jamie's body, still unconscious. "You claimed you were Nikola Tesla, and until a moment ago, was screaming about how nothing seemed to be making any sense." "That makes two of us..." he muttered thinking back to what Kate had told him. "I wonder..." Axer leaned back against the mainframe, rubbing his face. //Tesla? Are you there?// There was no answer. Axer swore, slamming his hand on a mainframe. Then he stopped and seemed to realize something. He walked over to Jamie and nonchalantly took off her head - - it was a mortal head, spraying out blood like a geiser. He looked at Mulroney, "I had to make sure. Do something with her body while I take a guided tour of the place." Mulroney looked worried. His worry changed to disgust as he began to get blood on his hands. --------------------------------------------------------- Henry Wyckoff -- wyckoff@ag.arizona.edu Q: Want to know how to conserve bandwitdth? A: We all stay off the web and watch the servers shut down. =========================================================================