The Thirteenth Skull
I choked up. I had had a lot of time by the ruins of Camelot, and sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes it isn’t. I wasn’t sure about this time, but I was pretty sure I knew the-thing-that-must-be-done.
“And if OIPEP doesn’t decide to finish SOFIA, somebody else will.”
“You don’t know that, Alfred,” Sam said.
“Sam, you gotta listen to me. Why do we have atomic bombs? Huh? Because it’s possible. Because we can. Somewhere, sometime, sooner or later, someone will use me to make SOFIA. Because it’s possible. Because they can.”
He started to cry. I’d never seen him cry before. Most people look uglier when they cry. Samuel was ugly to begin with, so now he looked really ugly.
“Alfred, remember the Devil’s Door? Remember what you said to me when I told you there was no hope? You have to go on, Alfred. Just a little bit farther. Just a little bit . . .”
The helicopter came to life, but the sound of it was muffled, the roar of the engine coming as if from behind a screen or curtain. Sam’s face looked fuzzy around the edges as I began to slip through the membrane into that space—the white, centerless space that wasn’t home but felt like home, warm and comforting and totally me-less.
“Here’s the thing,” I told him. He had to bow his head close to my lips to hear me. “Here’s the deal, Sam. With Mogart and the demons, I thought I was saving the world, but the main thing wasn’t the world, it was me. This time . . .” I coughed. Blood filled my mouth and I forced myself to swallow it. “I thought it was all about saving me, but it was never me. It was the world. I’m going to save the world, Samuel. And there’s nobody else who can save it but me.”
I couldn’t see Sam at all anymore. But I saw the castle, not a collection of fallen stones, spotted green with lichen and worn down to pitiful shadows of what they used to be. I saw them as they were supposed to be: brilliant white, walls and parapets that rose to heaven, and standing on the ramparts was a knight in shining armor, his sword raised toward me in salute.
On the other side of the white space, I heard Samuel’s voice. “Well, don’t just stand there! Help me get him to the chopper! Help me . . . !”
The knight upon the ramparts dipped his head.
00:00:00:13
I am scrambling up a mountain of fallen rock and razor-sharp crystal in the middle of the white, centerless space.
I confess to Almighty God . . .
Bloodied from my climb, I reach the summit. Here long grasses grow and caress my fingertips as I walk toward a yew tree, its branches bare.
. . . to blessed Michael the Archangel . . .
A man stands under the outstretched arms of the tree. He looks a little like Barney Fife from the old Andy Griffith Show.
“Al,” my uncle Farrell says. “It’s about time you got here.”
. . . to all the saints, and to you, Father . . .
He gives me a big hug; he’s only pretending to be mad. Over his shoulder, I see a tall, white-haired man standing in the long grass, and the grass is blushing bright spring green.
Before the last knight, I bow my head and sink to one knee.
I have sinned exceedingly, in thought, word, and deed . . .
“Oh, Alfred,” Lord Bennacio says tenderly. “It is I who should kneel to you.”
. . . through my fault—striking my chest with a fist after each fault—through my fault . . . through my most grievous fault . . .
He helps me to my feet, and now I see behind him a golden door and, beside that door, a large man with a flowing mane of hair.
Therefore I beseech you . . .
Smiling, my father raises his arm and a woman steps through the door. She takes his offered hand and together they stand, not moving, not coming to me, but waiting.
My mother takes me into her arms, and she is no ghost or dream. I can feel her. I can smell her hair.
I beseech you!
They gather around me. Bennacio laughs, pats my shoulder, and says, “Come, Alfred Kropp! You don’t want to be late for the feast!”
Together we walk toward the golden door.
00:00:00:03
00:00:00:02
00:00:00:01
00:00:00:00
FINAL EXTRACTION
INTERFACE REACHED
EPILOGUE:
OIPEP EMERGENCY SAFE HOUSE
(ESH: “KINGFISHER”)
SOMEWHERE OUTSIDE LONDON
That was my second death.
Which brought me to my third life: I didn’t make it through the golden door. Just as I was about to step over the threshold, I heard a woman’s voice calling me back. I didn’t want to go back. I guess that isn’t hard to understand. But the voice kept calling and the door began to recede into the white mist that also wrapped itself around the shapes of my mother and my father, then around me, until I couldn’t feel them beside me anymore but felt something or someone else, hugging me, and then there was this sensation of falling and this being was falling with me. I didn’t have to hear the voice calling me beloved to know who it was. I “pushed” against him. I was hungry and tired and I never wanted to leave my mom again, but I heard Not yet, not yet, my beloved.
I told him I hated him. I told him it wasn’t fair, that some fine guardian angel he was, letting me steal his Sword and letting all the knights get killed and me too—twice now. I wanted to stay with my mom.
Someone kept calling me, though, and that someone wasn’t the Archangel Michael.
That someone was Abigail Smith.
“Alfred . . . Alfred . . . ! Alfred, can you hear me?”
I opened my eyes. I was lying in a bed inside a room with whitewashed walls and a wooden floor, and beside me on a little table was a vase full of flowers. Daisies, I think.
“Oh, crap,” I said. “Extracted again.”
She was sitting beside the bed, smiling, and the white on the walls seemed yellow compared to her dazzling orthodontics.
“More lives than a cat,” she said.
“Two down, seven to go,” I said. “Where am I?”
“A safe house.”
“Am I? Safe?”
“Of course you are.”
“Where’s Sam?”
“He’s here. Would you like to see him?”
“Maybe not right now. Did he tell you what happened after you left Camp Echo?”
She nodded. She took my hand. “I should not have left you there, Alfred.”
“Well, that’s obvious,” I snapped back. “Why did you?”
“I believed the only hope of saving you was a direct appeal to the board.”
“And you didn’t know what Nueve was planning?”