Date: Thu, 9 Nov 1995 12:42:22 -0700 Reply-To: WOLFEM@CGS.EDU Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Michelle Wolfe Subject: my so-called immortality 1/? From: WOLFEM 9-NOV-1995 12:39:47.13 To: WOLFEM CC: WOLFEM Subj: my so-called immortality 1/? My So-Called Immortality (or, "never trust anyone over 300"): a Highlander excursion by M Wolfe (c. 1995) Part I: take a stab in the dark A FOREST FOUR HOURS OUTSIDE PARIS THE PRESENT NIGHT "In terror begins vision. In silence I learn my song, here at the stone nipple, the black moon bleeding, ...... the night that goes on and on, a tunnel through the earth" --Marge Piercy "...I have ridden a dragon, she thought. She whispered, 'I have murdered a man...' She corrected herself: 'Maybe murdered several .' Distressingly little to it when you were on the murdering side- though this pain was a reminder, how chancy it was, in such business, that one didn't end up on the other..." --Samuel Delany, _Neveryona_ She ran, the rough fiber of branches scratching, the soft leaves brushing, her arms, her face. She ran, insects clinging to her skin, and the smell of rotting pine and oak clinging to her nostrils. She ran, skipping over rocks and roots, dodging fallen logs. Her dark-adapted eyes darted in cycles between the trees around her to the trail on the ground. France. A forest. A full moon. It might have been a scene from one of the piles of paperback fantasy novels she had consumed between bouts of calculus and chemistry her freshman year of college. Except in the novel she wouldn't be alone-- some young wizard or ranger (dark-haired, preferably...and tall, lanky-- you know, *like Aragorn*...) would be running along side her. And they wouldn't be running, they'd have horses. Magical steeds, of course. She wouldn't be an American orphan with an assumed name, a fake passport and no money. She'd be an exiled Celtic princess, seeking to recover her country and lead her people in battle against the Dreaded Enemy. And she would be running from something magic, medieval-- a dragon or an evil mage. Not an inexplicable string of murders, disasters, and duels which followed her as she fled from town to town. Oh well. So much for fiction. She ran on and on, ignoring her aching calves and a throat raw from panting. But finally she stopped to rest, checking the glowing green faces of her odometer and compass. She'd run 30 kilometers. Fifteen more to the highway. Her legs were throbbing, and she was sweaty, cold, and trembling from fatigue. She could sleep now, or continue and collapse. She climbed an ancient elm and stuffed most of her gear in a hollow branch. She jumped down with an old sword and a trench coat which had been doubling regularly as a sleeping bag. She crawled underneath a shelf of tangled pine branches from two trees which had grown together. She pulled the coat over her like a blanket, and set the sword at her side, clutching the hilt with both fists, like a child clinging to the neck of a teddy bear. Sleep surprised her, dragging her down into dreamlessness before she could close her eyes. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ She woke up just as suddenly. Her eyes snapped open as a dull roaring split wide the dark silence in her head. She glanced around wildly, disoriented for a moment. And then she remembered where she was. And recognized the sickening sensation that woke her. God, not again. But then, all evidence indicated that God had stopped caring about her a long time ago. Sword in hand, she crawled into the clearing. It was still dark. How long had she slept? Who was tracking her? Her footsteps several meters away, on her left. The buzzing in her head had died down. she guessed that her stomach was still churning from fear, not the sensing. The footsteps came closer, than veered away. A wild hope surged in her head. Maybe she could hide--stay absolutely still and they would miss her in the darkness. Then reason interrupted. The wasn't a city street, where she could disappear into a crowd. As long as her presence could be sensed, whoever it was would look for her. She could make a run for it, or stay and fight. Either way, she would reveal herself. Either way she could end up dead. Her hands sweating, she clutched her sword tighter. She listened to the footsteps, circling. Should she call out--- and end this particular game of hide-and-seek? Her teacher had taught her to analyze the strategy in every possible action. What advantage would she gain by finding-- instead of waiting to be found? She saw motion in the moonlight, and realized in a second the question was pointless. They had seen her as well. She tried to ignore her pounding heart, and clenched her shaking free hand into a fist. She stared at the approaching figure, vague and sexless in the moonlight. As they came closer, she saw starlight reflected in the blade of a drawn sword, but still no face. The figure spoke, "So you are Emma Cuzo, student of MacLeod." It was a woman's voice, resonant but bitter. French. Completely unfamiliar. "How out of character for him. Tell me, does the highlander know what sort of monster he has fostered and trained?" *Who is she? How does she know me?* She tried to forget her fear. She answered, trying to sound more composed than she felt. "_Madame_, I don't know who you are, or why you would pursue me. But I do know...I know I'm not a monster. Please tell me how you know me-- and what I've done to anger you." Emma watched the woman's eye's emerge from the shadows. They flickered over her own face for a moment, as if examining her answer and then dismissing it. "What an innocent voice. And even in darkness, I can see a very pretty face. They must have mislead MacLeod, that voice and face. Luckily, I am not so susceptible." She lunged, and Emma backed away, bumping into a tree. The woman laughed, her voice rising with a sarcastic lilt, "So, young one. Do we fear the consequences of our choices?" "What choices? Tell me, what have I done?" The woman lunged again, and she defended weakly. "Look," she said desperately, "_Please_. I don't know who you are, and I don't want to fight you." Just barely, she could see the other woman smiling, painfully. "Yes, I see that now, that you don't want to fight..." The woman's voice faded out, as Emma felt a familiar vertigo, the feeling of her consciousness cracking. The terror dissolved. She felt as if she had slid sideways, out of her body, and lay watching herself, meters away. ...The woman was saying, "...but it's too late, Emma. You see, as MacLeod must have told you, there can be only one." Standing in some no-place beyond fear and pain, Emma watched herself--like a distant stranger-- quickly parry the woman's thrust, shrug and say, "So they keep telling me." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As the first sparks of the quickening stung her body, she felt her consciousness ripped away from peaceful, distant numbness-- the safe elsewhere of watching instead of being-- and thrown back inside her own body. Her muscles and nerves were exploding, her mind reeling, from the violent infusions of power, feeling, and sensation from the body of the beheaded woman. When the transmission subsided, she found herself face down in the dirt. Exhilarated and nauseated, she stood and looked down at the corpse. She had just absorbed centuries of life from a stranger. Who was she? Digging in coat pockets she found a wallet with I.D., credit cards, film stubs, pocket photos, currency. To read them, she'd have to wait for sunlight. And then she'd find-- what? The last in a long line of aliases? Paper and plastic scraps of a carefully constructed identity and life, a life summarily ended. A life _she_ had summarily ended. Her stomach lurched and her eyes began to burn. Here it comes. The waves of guilt. The revulsion. The feeling of being trapped forever in this endless, sickening "game." No. She wouldn't think about it. She couldn't. She didn't have time. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and fetched her things from the tree, slipping her sword into a hidden scabbard and shoving the wallet into the bottom of her knapsack. She looked at her watch (continually amazed that it still worked after its countless collisions with tempered steel). Three a.m. She had to put kilometers between herself and this body before daylight. Shouldering her bags, she began the long trek to the other side of the woods. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ She reached the highway before dawn. She'd been hiking along the side for half an hour when a truck pulled over. Looking hesitantly in the passenger window, Emma felt a rush of relief when she saw a young African woman sitting behind the wheel. She asked the driver in her best college French if she was driving to Paris. The woman gazed thoughtfully at Emma's wrinkled clothes, the smudges of soil on her face, the tiny twig she had missed, finger-combing her hair. The she nodded, and told her to climb in. The driver showed no interest in conversation. Slumped against the passenger seat, her cheek and brow prone against the cracked, sun-faded bleached vinyl, Emma stared numbly through the window at the passing series of towns and farms. When she was like this, quiet, empty and passive, she could begin to isolate a lurking sensation, a vague awareness, ever- present but normally hidden in the everyday jumble of thought and feeling. She sensed it along the mind's perimeter, feeling for its borders, probing its texture, its content. What she touched brought disorientation and a sense of being trapped. She was looking too closely at something too large. She came closer, she stepped back, but it never came into focus. Her eyes were too small. It was too big. And she was caught in it, tied to it. A puppet tangled in its own strings. And the knots grew tighter, as if someone were pulling them. And then the feeling was jerked away from her, as if she'd come too close. Wired on a sickeningly familiar mixture of quickening and sleeplessness, she brooded all the way to Paris. ______________________________ Flames and feedback (which are much desired) and requests for missing parts (...of the story, silly!): =========================================================================