The Ant Returns - Chapter VII - L'ignorance Était Bonheur (852 hits)
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Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2005-02-07 16:56:54 EST
(Prologue - http://www.ubersite.com/m/57985)
(Chapter I - http://www.ubersite.com/m/58042)
(Chapter II - http://www.ubersite.com/m/58125)
(Chapter III - http://www.ubersite.com/m/58205)
(Chapter IV - http://www.ubersite.com/m/58437)
(Chapter V - http://www.ubersite.com/m/58529)
(Chapter VI - http://www.ubersite.com/m/58649)
==La Troisième Partie - La Guerre de Robert Le Bel==
No varnish can hide the grain of the wood, and the more
varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.
-Charles Dickens
==Chapter VII - L'ignorance Était Bonheur==
The sound of the pump handle brought Vachon leaping out of bed.
Today he would be rid of the Bas family for good, and with an excuse that would be acceptable to Monsieur Collison. Vachon knew that Henri had too gentle a touch when it came to those who worked the land on the estate farms he owned in the vicinity on Pont Chandon, and Vachon knew that the only way to produce the greatest yield from this farm was to drive the workers as hard as possible.
He would have gotten rid of the Bas vermin years ago if not for the fact that dried-up old Béatrice had once suckled Hectoire Collison, many, many years before, when Hectoire's mother danced the dance of the mad while suffering the torments of the Holy Fire, before she was taken on a pilgrimage to Grenoble and was restored to health by the Hospitallers of St. Anthony. Now Vachon had a legitimate reason to get rid of the old crone and her grandchildren - their inability to work the land.
With the Bas family out of the picture, he could bring in young, strong men and squeeze every denier of profit from the earth.
Vachon stepped out his front door and saw the stranger filling a bucket with water.
Béatrice and Justine were standing by, gazing at the wiry man with awe. They watched him set the bucket before the old work-horse and scratch its mane while it drank.
The stranger looked tired. His shirt was torn and he looked as if he had been digging into the earth with his bare hands. The stranger scooped a handful of water and washed his face, after which Vachon could see bruises on the man's face and a deep, bloodied scratch on his forehead. He wondered what had happened. Etienne gave him the answer, as impossible as it was.
The boy ran into the barnyard carrying a basket and stopped before Vachon, trying to catch his breath. "The far field," the boy said, gasping. "It is clear now."
Vachon frowned, raised a meaty palm to swat the boy for treating him like an imbecile, and then paused, remembering the stranger. "Lies cannot help you now," he said, walking toward the path to the far field. "You will be gone by nightfall."
Vachon wasn't really interested in whatever feeble efforts the foursome had put forth during the night. The far field would have taken ten able men ten long days to clear. He did have to move his bowels, however, and he had dug a dozen shit-holes with pleasant views in that field.
"This is complete madness," Vachon muttered. He should have been in the far field by now, but he still had not reached the cluttered, uneven landscape he was so familiar with. He stopped, scratched his head, looked over his shoulder at the farm, and felt his bowels loose their contents into his trousers.
He was in the far field, or at least what had been the far field.
At the edge of the field, where a wood began, was a low wall composed of a thousand or more rocks of every size and shape. A wall that had not been there yesterday.
The wall was fifty strides long (Vachon figured his stride was close to equivalent with one of the Academy of Science's new metres).
Near one end of the wall were two piles of wood, the remains of the stumps. Larger pieces had been cut into stove lengths. Smaller pieces, and roots, had been broken down into kindling.
The earth itself was rich, dark and freshly turned, plowed into furrows, and awaiting seed.
Vachon walked back to the farm on unsteady legs. The stranger was leading the horse into the barn, and he followed.
"Demon!" he hissed.
Rob made a face.
"Only a demon could summon the creatures of the night and bend them to his will, working them as his slaves!" Spittle bubbled and gleamed at the edges of Vachon's mouth. He looked like a mad dog.
"I cleared the field with the help of the Bas family," Rob said. "We all worked through the night to please you, and in fact, Etienne started on the field long before that, doing most of the work."
Vachon was confused. When was the last time he paid any attention to that damned field?
Rob stepped close to Vachon. The man was rank!
"And now you will return to your little house and clean yourself up. If you should think of running to the Abbé, remember the pitchfork, and what it could do to you in skillful hands. Ask yourself if you want to go through life without an anus, soiling your breeches every time you draw a breath."
Some essential spark seemed to flicker and die in Vachon's eyes. He lowered his head, turned away, and slipped quietly into his house.
Etienne showed Rob the basket, and followed the boy into the cottage.
*
Rob figured that some of the oldest sayings were the ones holding the most truth. He now knew for a fact that ignorance was bliss.
A few hours ago he had been a confused, but satisfied man, helping the Bas family out of their troubles as he struggled to understand this new world around him.
Now he was Rob again. The old Rob. The Rob who knew everything.
Etienne's rock had apparently undone the damage Justine's had caused in the first place.
And it hurt like a sonofabitch, just like the first hit had.
After blacking out, Rob had come to, seeing the boy standing over him and shivering with anxiety. The kid had jumped up in the air and clapped his hands when Rob got to his feet.
Rudolph and Angela were gone.
Etienne said that the moment Rob collapsed he hid behind the wall. The boy said the devils in the field were enraged, and they swore and muttered in a strange tongue before taking their leave.
Figuring he would take one thing at a time, Rob plowed the field. He simply pushed the old plow ahead of him and ran as fast as he could. He used the time behind the plow to figure things out.
The way Angela's skin had stretched like rubber and the talons her hands had become were horrifyingly familiar to him, as was the unnatural strength exhibited by Rudolph.
Rob finished his task in an hour, just as the sun began lighting the sky.
Etienne was fascinated, and when he touched the blade of the plow it burned his fingers. Together they returned to the farm, the old horse in tow.
Rob now knew exactly what he had to do, and what he was up against.
He had to stop his ancestor Henri Collison from dying in the guillotine, in only a few days.
And he had to avoid more of Pfaltzer's genetic monstrosities— Angela, who was the offspring of the shape-shifting El Hombre Mucho Mas Elastico and the Harpy, a winged, taloned berserk horror, and Rudolph, the child of the devastatingly strong PMS Girl and sociopathic Invulnerable Boy, the one who had come closest to punching Rob's ticket.
And he would surely have to deal with old Doctor Pfaltzer himself, who was none other than the Abbé's mysterious Count.
*
"Well," Rob said in English, "I'm fucked six ways from Sunday."
Justine and Etienne shook their heads, not understanding. Old Béatrice looked grave, understanding Rob's tone more than his words.
They were sitting around the dining table in the cottage. On the table were the contents of the basket, the Ant suit, and the timebelt. The artifacts from the future had been reduced to unusable scrap.
Plastics, petroleum-based products, and synthetic polymers, which included everything from the Kevlar threads in the Ant suit to the high-impact rubber and plastic of the helmet, überboots and gauntlets, were breaking down.
The suit was coming apart as if it were a thousand years old.
The helmet was brittle, dry, laced with cracks and shedding reddish flakes.
The rubber that made up most of the gauntlets and überboots was now foul-smelling goo.
The nylon webbing which once was the belt portion of Schroedecker's time traveling device was now a wet smear inside the basket, and the device itself was leaking fluids through gaping black holes that had once held colored lights and buttons.
When Rob opened a panel in the back of the metal casing he saw bits of gold and ceramic sloshing about in a soup that had been silicon chips and cycolac.
It's as if anything that doesn't exist in this time can't exist in this time, Rob thought, realizing that he was extremely fortunate the Doctor had used a ceramic earring for his insulin supply.
There was only going to be one way back home, and that would be with whatever device had brought Pfaltzer to this time.
Rob had no idea what to say to the Bas family. He had to leave, and he had to leave now. He had to get to Paris immediately... and he didn't even know what direction to follow.
A scream swept away the morning silence, a shriek filled with such pain and horror that Rob thought he might have imagined it, until he saw Béatrice and Justine cross themselves in perfect synchronization and Etienne run to the window.
"It came from the barn," the boy said.
Rob went to the door. "All of you stay here," he said. "All of you."
Etienne had been reaching for a large knife hanging from a hook on one wall. His fingers brushed it and it danced at the end of its leather thong. The boy looked frightened of whatever was outside, and furious that he would not be included in the investigation.
As Rob went out the door he saw old Béatrice lifting the basket as if ready to hide it again.
Crossing the barnyard, Rob noticed that even the chickens were in hiding. He stepped inside the barn and looked around. The old horse was standing in its stall. A saddle had been strapped onto the animal, and Rob figured Vachon had been planning a trip. He found Vachon a moment later, and it wasn't pretty.
The big man was propped against a ladder. His head had been torn off, and the spine extracted intact, still attached to the skull. One beefy hand was raised up, and Rob could see the nail driven through the wrist into a rung of the ladder. In a bloody fist Vachon grasped his own tailbone, his horrified face looking down from the opposite end of that grisly column of bone.
"Sort of looks like he's holding a balloon on the end of a string, huh?"
Rob looked up and saw Angela standing on the edge of the hayloft. She let the cloak covering her slip open and showed a little leg, like a femme fatale in some noir flick from the forties.
"That's the effect I was going for anyway," she said, opening the robe and letting Rob see that she was pretty much naked. "Yunno, something festive."
Thin membranes of flesh that had run from her arms to her hips like the wings of a bat were receding, absorbed into her body. She shrugged, and her too-perfect tits bounced. "I thought you'd find it funny."
Angela stepped off the edge of the loft as if stepping off a curb, landing lightly in front of Rob.
"What's your business here?"
"I'm here for the belt," she said. Her eyes were green a minute ago. Now they were blue. Her breasts were bigger too, pointing at him like fleshy weapons.
She's waiting for a reaction, Rob thought. She wants to see what I like, maybe try and use it against me.
Rob picked at a bit of dirt lodged under one thumbnail. "Belt?"
Angela took a deep breath, losing her patience. Small, high breasts rose and fell as she brushed a fiery red lock of hair away from her eyes.
"The timebelt, tough guy," she snapped, her grey eyes darkening to a brown so dark it was nearly black. "The one Schroedecker used to send you back here."
"Oops," Rob said. "Hope you weren't relying on that to jump forward. It's toasted."
"Liar!" She lashed at Rob even as thick dark claws erupted from the fingers of one hand, and ran out of the barn.
With no time to avoid her swipe, Rob tensed his muscles, but he still felt a painful jolt. His chest was cut and he was slammed back into the rear wall of the barn.
By the time Rob reached the cottage, Angela had practically demolished the fragile structure, and was kneeling in front of it, the contents of the basket spilled before her. Cartoonishly massive battering-ram fists were shrinking down to a normal size.
"This can't be real," Angela said. "This has to be a trick." She shook her fingers, trying to free them of some black slime, and then huddled over the basket.
Rob noticed Etienne and Béatrice standing in the wreckage of the cottage, and he was troubled by the boy's pallor. He couldn't see Justine anywhere.
"Where's the girl?"
Angela looked up and gave Rob a cruel smile. "You like them young, then?" She pointed towards the privy, and then ran for it.
Peeking around one side of the outhouse was Justine. When she saw Angela coming she ducked out of sight.
Rob ran after her, and when he reached the far side of the privvy he stopped dead. Two Justines were standing there.
Jesus, Rob thought, how did she fake the clothes? They were identical. The same worn clothes, the same grimy faces, the same fearful eyes.
"Which one of you is the real Justine?"
"C'est moi!" both girls answered, in perfect French.
Rob figured there was only one thing to do. He dropped his pants.
Etienne and Béatrice would have laughed at the suggestion that they could not tell Justine apart from anyone else, but now they were mute with shock.
They had seen the female demon running towards Justine, and when they reached the privy there were two Justines, and Robert the stranger was undoing his pantalons and letting them drop around his ankles.
"Madness," Béatrice muttered.
Rob spotted the real Justine instantly. Despite all she had been through recently, she was still a good Catholic girl, and the moment Rob undid the drawstring on his pants she hid her eyes with both hands.
Angela, on the other hand, still wearing Justine's face, took a long, leering glance after Rob's pants hit the dirt.
Shit, Rob thought, I'm free-bagging.
In the time it took Rob to pull up and tie his pants, Angela had shifted into gargoyle-babe mode, her farm-girl clothes becoming the fleshy folds of wings, her hands remaining small and delicate while the nails elongated into narrow knives of bone.
"Careful, tough guy," she said, grabbing Justine by the throat. "This pretty little thing will look like a dressed rabbit if you take one step closer."
"Justine," Béatrice said, "The arms of Jesus await you."
Incredibly, the young girl smiled. "I know."
Rob and Angela looked perplexed. Etienne's face darkened, but he stood his ground. Béatrice glanced at Rob.
"You may destroy both of them," Béatrice said, "If it means ridding the world of that she-demon. Justine will dwell with the Lord forever, as long a time as that thing burns in hell."
There was no way Rob was going to risk hurting Justine, but Angela didn't know that. She took one step away from the girl, and then Rob acted on instinct. He took a deep breath, and blew as hard as he could. Justine was bowled over, falling on the soft earth. Angela's membraned wings caught the strong gust from Rob's lungs, partially unfolded, and sent her skipping across the field like a leaf caught in the wind.
Rob pounced on her as she tried to crawl away and tried to get a grip on her ankle, but her flesh became greasy and as insubstantial as warm tallow under his fingers. Smaller, more powerful wings erupted from her body just as her head was split wide by a gaping mouth filled with massive teeth. Letting his fingers dig deeper into the warm flowing flesh, Rob sought and found solid bone.
He stood quickly, and spun Angela through the air like a sack, like a pitcher winding up for a good throw, when he realized that throwing her would do no good. She'd simply fly away.
Her jaws snapped wetly between curses, and saliva splashed his cheek. Any second now she was gonna bite his fucking head clean off.
He twirled her overhead again, and again, her voice becoming as blurred as her features as she was spun in faster and faster arcs.
Ram pressure, Rob thought, and, this is going to be ugly.
Rob's arm was just beginning to tire as Angela's whirling form attained a traveling speed of nearly five miles per second. Angela's mass was moving so fast that it was compressing the air she was moving through, compressing and heating the atmospheric gases which in turn heated Angela's skin and hair to the point where they began to vaporize and became incandescent.
When Rob let her go her body surged up through the air, paused, and then fell back toward the field. Angela's momentum actually slowed, but the built-up heat was still within her body and spattering, popping flames burst forth from it.
When she hit the ground a few seconds later, she was a blackened, twisted wreck, not recognizably human, definitely no longer living.
Béatrice was holding Justine, comforting the girl, who whispered to her grandmother. Béatrice laughed. "Justine thinks you have been sent down from heaven, to preserve us. She just called you Robert le Bel."
Great, thought Rob. I'm not supposed to disturb the timeline and I'm already halfway between a mythic hero and a servant of Satan.
To Béatrice he said, "Can I leave you and the children for a short time? I have to go to town." He saw Etienne spit and curse upon being referred to as a child, but the last thing he wanted to waste time on was dancing around the boy's ego.
The old woman glanced at the furrow in the soft earth that held Angela's smoldering remains. "We should be fine now, with God's grace."
Béatrice gave Rob a beatific smile that mirrored Justine's and made his skin crawl. Jesus, let me outta here!
"Stay out of sight in Vachon's house until I get back," he said. He thought a moment, and then pointed at Etienne. "You're in charge now. You'll be my Captain. Keep the women out of harm's way."
For a moment, Etienne looked like he was going to bust. He adopted a stern look and began ushering Béatrice and Justine toward Vachon's house, prodding their backsides with a pointed finger. Béatrice clipped his ear with one calloused hand, and Justine kicked out at his shins and would have connected if the boy hadn't seen it coming.
Rob turned away, and headed back to Pont Chandon.
User Reviews
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-08-03 11:54:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Supreme Overlord damage control...
Submitted by Supreme_Overlord (user info) at 2005-07-21 22:24:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
shite
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2005-02-16 15:25:33 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Mitchapalooza (user info) at 2005-02-16 04:15:34 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
yawn.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2005-02-08 09:09:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You are my hero.
Submitted by Remission (user info) at 2005-02-08 00:17:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I love you
Submitted by tlozoot (user info) at 2005-02-07 22:40:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
How does this keep getting better and better?!?!?
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2005-02-07 21:32:05 EST (#)
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comment
Submitted by horse87 (user info) at 2005-02-07 18:37:26 EST (#)
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..as usual....
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-02-07 17:49:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Chapters 8 through 433 will be available tomorrow through a subscription service.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2005-02-07 17:24:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
i was really bumming that there was not more of this today. Great stuff!
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-02-07 17:05:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
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