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The Peaceable Kingdom

Severna Park

Severna Park is the author of several SF novels, including Speaking Dreams and most recently The Annunciate, bold works which take the tropes of classic space opera and use them for profound meditations on power, sexuality, and the nature of human relations. Plus a cracking good story, of course!

In this little fable, Ms. Park shows the underside of the Domination, and how the plain fact and sanity of one timeline can become the paranoid fantasy of another.

What made Doctor Hamilton Guye's office different from the rest of the cardboard cubicles in the Police Psychiatric division were the paintings, his own paintings, hung on the walls. There were the small ones with the wide-eyed animals lying down together in a peaceful clump; lions, zebras, gazelles, all together by a silvery waterhole. Those were the ones he showed to his patients, like Rorschach ink blots, letting hardened criminals and first-time offenders wander through the fiction of a perfect world, while he waited to hear their impressions. The small ones were quick works—impressions of a peaceable kingdom, but his masterpiece—the one he used to calm himself while the murderers and rapists and robbers and lunatics hunched in the heavy wooden chair across the desk from him, was the big painting of Paradise on the opposite wall.

His patients sat with their backs to it, facing the white haze of Baltimore summers and the gray misery of Baltimore winters, while Hamilton only had to look over their shoulders to see golden rays of sun lying over lush jungle. Leopards, languid on high branches; elephants, quiet and hidden in the shade of vast palms. Lemurs and giraffes; eland and white herons. Here, the dark viridian green of ferns in the undergrowth. There, the bright vermilion where sun cut through the upper branches. While the rest of the department went to Tully's bar, down on St. Paul Street, Hamilton stayed focused, day after day, year after year, on his own inner visions.

One July afternoon, a police lieutenant brought him a prisoner. The prisoner was a young man, white, about thirty, with stiff black hair and flashing black eyes. He was shackled in a leather belt, with hands and feet chained. He had the look of an angry crow, thought Hamilton, and wondered how that kind of bird might fit in the upper right corner of the painting he was working on at home.

"Sit down," he said to the prisoner, who dropped into the wooden chair, facing the window.

The police lieutenant handed Hamilton a blue Psych Eval Request folder. "He's nuts," said the lieutenant. "Thought you should know." He glanced around the office, which only had enough wall space between the paintings for a bulletin board and a small table with a coffee pot. "You do all this stuff yourself?"

"Oh yes," said Hamilton.

The prisoner slumped in the chair, manacled hands between his knees. He didn't look at the paintings, or the torpid view out the window. Just the floor.

"We picked this joker up last night," said the lieutenant. "He was trying to break into a gun shop."

Hamilton opened the folder.

Name: Malik Rau.
Age: Unknown
Address: Unknown
Delusional, confrontational and violent. No known prior convictions or arrests. No known medical history.

 

"Thought he was a crackhead," said the cop. "He was yelling his head off, trying to jump us. One guy, five cops." He grinned and patted his nine millimeter. "Good joke, huh?"

"Good joke," said Hamilton.

"They did a blood test on him downstairs," said the cop. "But there wasn't any crack in his system. So we decided he wasn't a crackhead. Just nuts. So now he's your problem."

"I guess he is," said Hamilton.

The lieutenant turned to go. "When you get done with him, send the chains back downstairs, okay?"

"No problem."

The cop left and closed the door. Hamilton got up, made himself a cup of coffee and sat down again. The prisoner didn't move.

"Mister Rau," said Hamilton. "Would you like a cup of coffee?"

"No," said Rau. He didn't say it like a Baltimore native. He said noh, like a foreigner.

"Can you tell me where you live?" said Hamilton.

"No," said Rau.

"Can you tell me how old you are?"

"No."

"Can you tell me why you were trying to rob the gun store?"

Rau just stared at the floor.

Ten minutes, thought Hamilton, and then he can come up with some answers in the cellblock downstairs. He let his eyes stray to the painting of Paradise on the far wall of the office. There was a dark area at the bottom left, which he had been thinking needed a dab of cerulean blue. Maybe he'd bring paint in tomorrow and fix it during lunch. He turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

"Mister Rau," he said. "I'd like to ask you some questions. Would that be all right?"

Rau shrugged.

Hamilton picked up a small framed painting from the top of his desk. This was one inspired by Rousseau; a man sleeping peacefully on the ground, approached by a lion. The colors were pure and fanciful. The man was deep in a dream. The lion looked curious, not hungry.

"Can you tell me what this picture is about?" said Hamilton.

Rau frowned and held the painting clumsily in both hands. His chains jingled as they moved.

"This is an innocent man who is oblivious to the dangers around him," he said.

Hamilton listened to the soft accent, unable to place it. Not British. Not quite Jamaican. Almost one of those west African dialect-accents, but this man was distinctly Caucasian. He looked almost Greek.

"Have you ever seen a lion?" said Hamilton.

"Yes," said Rau. "Many."

"In the zoo?" said Hamilton.

"No," said Rau. "I've slept out in the dirt like this, and they would come to see if they could eat you. But I never let them get this close."

Hamilton smiled. This was going to be a much easier evaluation than he had expected. Rau was projecting himself into the painting. His sense of reality was skewed in an almost textbook manner. "Where was this?"

"At home," said Rau. "Where the Draka are."

"The Draka?" said Hamilton. "Is that a kind of animal?"

"No," said Rau, and his face seemed to close. He put the picture down and put his hands in his lap and didn't say another word. Finally Hamilton called the Psych department officers and had him taken to the holding cells on the first floor.

* * *

The next day, they brought Rau up in handcuffs, not shackles.

"Have you had anything to eat?" said Hamilton.

Rau nodded.

"Would you like some coffee?"

Rau gave the pot a longing look and Hamilton poured him a cup. "Would you like anything in it?" asked Hamilton.

"No," said Rau and took the cup in both hands like a child.

"I'd like to show you some more paintings," said Hamilton. "Would that be all right?"

"Yes," said Rau.

Hamilton took a painting down from the wall. This one was larger than the one inspired by Rousseau, although it had a few of the same elements. In this one, the sleeping man was surrounded by big cats—leopards, lions, cheetahs and a white tiger which Hamilton had painted in gleaming opaline. To Hamilton, the cats looked protective, but he had painted them so their teeth showed. He held the canvas where Rau could see it. "What do you think?" he said.

"I think you are an excellent painter," said Rau.

"Thank you," said Hamilton, "but what I meant was, what does the painting say to you?"

Rau hunched over the hot coffee and took a long time to answer. His eyes darted back and forth across the canvas as though searching for an escape for the sleeping man. "Why don't they kill him?" he whispered finally. "Is it because they want him to wake up and see them before they tear him to pieces?"

"Who?" said Hamilton.

"The cats of course," said Rau. "They will descend on him."

"Perhaps they're protecting him," said Hamilton, but Rau let out a bark of a laugh.

"The Draka only protect themselves," he said and then his eyes went wide. He shot to his feet, spilling the coffee all over the desk. "Are you with them?" he shouted. "Are you with them!"

Hamilton called security and they took Rau away, still screaming. Hamilton prescribed a tranquilizer, called in maintenance to clean up his office and went home early.

* * *

At home in his crowded apartment, he put on Chopin and the air conditioning and opened his paint box. The work on his easel was only halfway done. The preliminary sketch, done in broad strokes of burnt sienna over primed white canvas, showed a garden of Eden with a dove in one upper corner and a Rau-like crow in the other. Below, gazelle and wolves drank together from a sparkling fountain. Trees dotted the horizon and tiny wild roses filled the foreground. Rabbits and squirrels capered in the undergrowth. Hamilton stood pensively in front of the half-finished painting thinking that there needed to be more predators. He brushed in a hawk, circling, but the wings were wrong, making it look more like a vulture. He needed a picture to look at and put the brush down to search for his Peterson's Field Guide to North American Birds. In the section between "Smaller Wading Birds" and "Birds of Prey," his doorbell rang.

Through the peephole, he saw a tall, fair-skinned woman with a knot of red hair. She was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. The fisheye distortion of the peephole made her look odd—long-nosed, like a heron.

"Yes?" said Hamilton.

"I'm with the tenants' association," said the woman. "There's a meeting this weekend to discuss the rent increase."

"Rent increase?" said Hamilton.

"Twenty-five percent," said the woman. "Haven't you been reading the fliers in your mailbox?"

He couldn't recall a flier in his mailbox. He opened the door and the woman smiled, showing perfect white teeth. She stepped through the door without an invitation. Her perfume—or some indefinable odor—filled the air around him, subtle and predacious. She shut the door with her heel, dropped the briefcase and her false manner.

"Rau," she said in a low voice, which resonated in the spaces between his belly and scrotum. "Where is Rau?" 

"R-r-rau?"

"We want him," she said. "He knows we're here. You'll bring him to us."

"Uh-us?" he echoed. She was taller, wilder. Her eyes were all pupil, focused on his tender organs. His heart hammered in his chest. His palms turned cold and wet. He felt like he would fall to the floor in a dead faint, and that she would stand over him until he woke up and agreed, or if he refused, she would smile with those teeth and tear him to shreds. He was the rabbit staring into the eyes of the lion. He was the bird on the edge of flight. He wanted to scream, but her presence overwhelmed any panicky sound he might make.

"Tomorrow," she said, "you'll bring him to the warehouse at 411 Center Street at three PM. You'll come alone. You'll drop him off and you'll leave. You understand?"

"Yes," he whispered.

"Very good. Remember the time. Remember the address."

"Yes," he whispered.

She picked up her briefcase, opened the door and left.

As her footsteps vanished down the carpeted hallway, he pushed the door shut, ever so quietly, and stood behind his deadbolts, breathing so hard he thought he might pass out. He went into the kitchen and opened the drawer where he kept the knives and his service revolver. He took out the gun, put it back and took out a cleaver instead. He went back to the room where the painting was, and slashed at it, breathless and silent until the false vision of the peaceful kingdom was nothing but a stained rag hanging in a wooden frame.

* * *

 

First thing in the morning, he went down to see Rau in the lockup and took him to a soundproof interrogation room.

Rau took a long look at him. "They came to see you."

"Yes."

"They know you have me in here."

"Yes."

"They want me back."

Hamilton nodded, dry-mouthed at the memory. He hadn't slept at all, and his body felt thick and heavy, lagging behind his racing mind. "I have to take you to them," he said. "I can't explain why. I'm sorry, but I have to."

Rau sat down at the battered interrogation table, which was stained with coffee and scattered with donut sugar. "They're different than us. They have different chemicals in their bodies. Pheromones. They affect you like a strong emotion you can't explain."

Hamilton nodded and sank into the other chair.

"When they talk, you can't argue," said Rau. "Did you feel that, too?"

"Yes."

"When do you have to do it?" he said.

"Three. This afternoon."

Rau put his palms flat on the dirty table. "I have friends who can help you. I was getting weapons for them when I was arrested. It's very important that I not go back with the Draka. We've been working a long time to fight them and now we're almost ready."

"How?" whispered Hamilton. "How can you fight that . . . that kind of feeling?" 

"From a distance," said Rau. "With scopes and rifles. You understand? You have to help us now, because you understand."

He didn't understand. He could barely make himself talk about it. To think about the woman in his apartment made Hamilton want to break into helpless sobs. Draka. Was that the word that described this hollow terror?

"What do I have to do?" he said.

"First," said Rau, "you have to get me out of here."

* * *

That wasn't the difficult part. Rau's psychiatric evaluation made it easy for Hamilton to initiate a transfer to Behavioral/Criminal department at Shepherd-Pratt. Because of the urgency of Rau's condition, Hamilton's supervisor Okay'd immediate transport. When the prison van showed up at the station, Rau, shackled climbed in. Hamilton told the driver he had a phone call, and when the driver was out of sight, he got behind the wheel and slowly drove away. It was ten-thirty in the morning.

"Where to?" he said to Rau.

"Turn left," said Rau. "I'll tell you where to go."

They ended up on the west side of town, deep in the baking, ungentrified ruins of the old city. Treeless, lawnless brick rowhouses loomed on either side of the narrow street. Most of the windows were boarded. Those that weren't were dark, ominous, and framed with broken glass. Now and then a stray dog would trot across the littered street. Ravens topped the high walls like gargoyles. There wasn't a human being in sight.

Rau leaned forward, still chained in the back of the van, separated from Hamilton by a layer of wire mesh. "It's this block. The house with the blue door."

The house was just as deserted-looking as its neighbors with boards over everything but the blue door. The only difference was that instead of being flanked on either side by other buildings, one side faced an alley.

"Pull in there," said Rau.

There could be nothing more noticeable than a police van in an area like this. Hamilton peered around before he backed into the alley, which ended fifty feet from the street in a pile of trash and scraggly trees. This was heroin territory; crack-factory frontier. It was the part of police work he had avoided for years by dealing with its denizens in his own environment instead of plunging into theirs. The Draka had scared him—surprised him—but the hidden inhabitants of this neighborhood were a known and terrifying quantity.

"Are you sure we're in the right place?" he said.

"Positive." Rau shifted impatiently in his chains. "Hurry up. We don't have much time."

* * *

The blue door was unlocked, which made Hamilton's heart pound even harder. He'd brought his service revolver, and clenched it in his sweaty hand. Rau pushed the door open and let it swing inward. Except for the spill of dull light through the front door, the inside of the rowhouse was dark.

Rau said something in a language Hamilton didn't recognize and a tall man with the same hair and similar features as Rau stepped out of the shadows. He was holding a gun that was almost as long as his body, festooned with scopes and gadgets, like something out of a Terminator movie. He swung the gun up in an easy motion and aimed it right at Hamilton.

"No," said Rau in his soft accent. "This is a friend."

"Scan him," said the man with the gun, and two more men appeared silently from the darkness. They were as alike to each other as brothers, but it wasn't a family resemblance so much as a racial similarity. White men with Mediterranean features and West African accents. Hamilton tried hard to place the combination and simply couldn't. One of the men pointed a palm-sized device, about the same size and shape as a cell phone, in Hamilton's direction. He examined the tiny screen and gave his companions a quick nod. The three of them relaxed. The gun went down. Rau closed the door and lights came on.

Normally, rowhouses like this opened up into a small living room and dining room with a door at the far end for the kitchen. This one had been gutted to the plaster walls. In the middle of the former living space was a vehicle parked as though it was in a garage. At first glance, it looked like an ultra heavy-duty SUV, but on closer examination, Hamilton could see that it was armored. The front wheels were sheathed tires of some kind, and the back of the vehicle hunkered on distinctly tank-like treads. The front windshield was only a slit, and the tube-shaped sidelines were open in front, perforated along the tops, like machine-gun barrels. The cap on the back of the truck extended over the cab, where openings like air scoops lay on the roof over the slit windshield. Sharp metal cones peeked out of the openings and those were missiles, Hamilton realized. Whatever it was—tank, or truck, or the latest from Detroit—it was outfitted for war.

"You're going to fight the Draka with this?" he said.

At the word, Draka, the three men stiffened. Rau put a finger over his lips. "Come upstairs," he whispered. "I have to explain our situation to them."

* * *

Upstairs, the accommodations were Spartan and temporary. There was a card table with half a dozen folding chairs. Blankets and mattresses covered the floor. It would have been a stopping place for the homeless except for the guns in racks along the walls.

Rau and his companions spoke in low, urgent voices while Hamilton sat in a chair and looked around the room at the collection of firepower. Hand guns, rifles, automatics and semiautomatics. Some looked like Vietnam vintage, some he didn't recognize. The guns covered the walls like a museum exhibit. He counted the folding chairs, counted the men and counted the number of guns. He speculated at the number of passengers the tank/truck downstairs could hold, and came up with a sum total of utter fear.

What did these men expect? That the Draka—that woman in her heels and briefcase and frightening attitude—would stride toward them through a hail of bullets untouched? Did they imagine throwing down gun after gun as they ran through boxes of ammunition until all they had left to blow her away were the missiles from the top of the truck? How many Draka were there? An image formed in Hamilton's mind of an army of them, so many that an arsenal like this would barely dent their ranks.

"What are they?" he blurted in the dim room. "Where do they come from?"

The men, who had been talking in low voices, stopped and turned to stare at him.

"They're a breed of human," said Rau. "Homo drakensis. They're the future of this planet if we don't stop them."

"The future?" echoed Hamilton.

"They're not from this time," said Rau, softly, as though he was afraid of invoking evil spirits. "They've traveled here to find us, and we've traveled here to stop them from ever starting their Final Society."

"Traveled?" said Hamilton. "From . . . where?"

"From when," said Rau. "Not where. We're here to change the future. That's all you need to know."

* * *

Three o'clock came marching toward Hamilton with dogged determination, too slow and still too fast. At two-fifty-five, he was sitting in the police van in front of the warehouse at 411 Center Street, letting the engine idle as traffic rumbled past. Rau's voice was a tinny whisper through the clip in his ear.

"Can you see anything?" said Rau.

Hamilton shook his head, just a little. The warehouse was ordinary. The sign on the door said MODERN PLASTICS. There was no more hint of an infestation of Draka than there had been a suggestion of a tank housed behind the blue door on the west side of town. And where was the tank? He eyed the rearview mirror, but all he could see was a battered Chevy Nova parked behind him and the dirty glass front of an abandoned car dealership on the opposite side of the street. Rau's compatriots had made him leave first, but as he'd turned the corner, heading away from the blue door, there had been an unmistakable thoom of collapsing masonry, and he suspected that they had driven their tank right through the front wall.

He eyed the warehouse, dry in the mouth, hands sweaty on the steering wheel. What would the Draka woman do when she discovered that he hadn't brought Rau? He thought of his benevolent tiger painted in opaline shades and could only picture its gleaming teeth.

Three o'clock. His watch beeped twice.

"Get out of the van," said Rau.

"I can't," he whispered.

"Get out," snapped Rau. If you don't, I guarantee they'll come and kill you." 

Hamilton took a breath and obeyed, almost too numb to feel his feet on the asphalt.

"Go to the door and knock twice," said Rau. "When they ask, tell them I'm still in the van." 

Hamilton made his way to the door. The sidewalk glittered with shards of broken glass. Scraps of old newspaper lay limp in the heat. He came to the door and stopped. He raised his hand to knock in the worn place beside the sign, Modern Plastics, but the door opened before he touched it.

The Draka woman stood in a rush of cool air from inside. Her perfume. Her pheromones. Her breath of domination swirled around him. Hamilton steadied himself against the side of the building.

"Where's Rau?" she said.

"In the v-v-v-van."

She made a motion to someone behind her and a tall, elegant looking man stepped past her onto the heat of the sidewalk. His emanations were nothing compared to hers. His body language was docile, and he almost scampered to do what she told him. He was like Rau, Hamilton realized. He was a flunky, or worse, a slave.

The elegant man got to the van and peered through the window. Rau's tinny voice snapped in Hamilton's ear.

"Two steps back. NOW!" 

Hamilton leaped backwards, eager to put as much distance between him and the Draka as possible. The elegant man turned to tell his mistress that there was no one in the van and at the same moment, the dirty plate glass window in the abandoned car dealership across the street shattered.

The tank erupted from the building in a cloud of glass and dust and smoke from the missile batteries over the cab. The missile arced over Center Street and Hamilton had time to throw himself to the littered sidewalk. Traffic screeched to a halt as one of the missiles hit Modern Plastics. Hamilton curled away from the heat and noise of impact. Broken glass and mortar showered around him. The tank roared across the street and he looked over his shoulder long enough to see the police van tilt and crumple under its treads. The Draka was nowhere in sight. The tank fired again at point-blank range. Modern Plastics collapsed, roof-first, in a cloud of dirt and drywall plaster. Hamilton picked himself up, fighting the urge to run for his life. The dust fell in a gritty rain, and in the ruins of the building, he expected to see nothing but bent girders and torn bodies.

Instead, he could see some kind of metallic shielding flush with the ground and just visible through broken masonry and debris. It was immense, like the side of a barn. As Hamilton watched, it moved as though it was about to open. Wind blew grit across the broken sidewalk and Hamilton smelled the Draka—angry, present and very much alive. The hair on the back of his neck rose up. The tank's door swung open and Rau leaned out.

"Get in!" he yelled. "Hurry up!"

"You've killed them!" Hamilton shouted back, even though he knew it wasn't true.

"Get in!" shrieked Rau, and as he did, the metallic shielding in the ruins bulged upwards and parted.

Every instinct told Hamilton to run. His legs shook. His mouth was dry. His feet would have dashed off by themselves if they could. But as he stood there, frozen with the breath of awful terror that drifted up from the rising metal, he knew he could never outrun what was about to emerge. The instinct to flee would mean certain death. He ran for the tank and crawled in behind Rau, clumsy and awkward with fear. He glanced into the red-lit interior, expecting to see Rau's companions but the back of the tank was deserted except for an immense plastic container.

"Where the hell're your friends?" he shouted.

Rau was tensed over a joystick instead of a steering wheel. His right hand rested on a control panel blinking with red and green lights. He didn't take his eyes off the metal door, which had opened to an angle of about twenty-five degrees. Broken bricks slid off as it rose. Plaster dust and fractured floorboards surrounded it like a giant nest.

"Where are they?" demanded Hamilton.

"They're right behind us," said Rau in a low, hard voice and he indicated the passenger seat with a jerk of his head. "Sit." Hamilton obeyed, and Rau snared his hand with wire-hard fingers. He pressed Hamilton's thumb next to the biggest of the red-lit buttons on the control panel. "This is yours," he said without taking his eyes off the destruction in front of them. "When I tell you to push that, you push." 

"What is it?" said Hamilton.

Rau cocked his head toward the back of the tank where the plastic container hunkered in the dark. Hamilton knew without asking that it was a bomb. A big bomb. Probably big enough to blow Baltimore off the eastern seaboard.

"I can't—" he started to say, but the metal door in front of them was rising, opening onto a black space below the ground, an emanating darkness that clenched in his throat, in his gut. There were Draka down there—he could feel them—and all the punks and murderers and rapists in the world were angels in comparison. He held his thumb over the button, shaking harder than he'd ever shaken in his life. Rau touched a button and the tank shoved backwards as a missile shot away from the roof. The missile plunged through the metal door, leaving a ragged hole. A cloud of smoke blew out—but it was a thin cloud—as though the space below was big enough to absorb the rest of the smoke and the explosion. Rau made an adjustment and fired again. This time the metal door burst apart, leaving a smoky view of a wide, cratered ramp leading into an immense cavern. Rau punched the accelerator and the tank bolted forward.

Hamilton expected an army to meet them as the tank banged and jounced over what had been Modern Plastics, and held on to the edge of the hard seat with one hand as the tank bounded down the ramp. Rau snapped on a glaring halogen floodlight and the infested space beneath the block—the street—the city—leaped up in stark contrasts of black and white.

Like Hieronymus Bosch demons, the Draka minions swarmed below. Their weapons sliced blue swaths through the weird-lit dark as armies of them ran heedlessly into the rain of bullets from the tank and fell like cut wheat. The budda-budda of automatic weapons vibrated through the cab and bullets pinged off the windshield. Voices blared through a tiny loudspeaker while Rau shouted back in his own language. Hamilton turned in time to see one of Rau's compatriots gun down a horde of black-clad lackeys before being mowed down himself in a spray of blood and brain. They had to be lackeys, Hamilton told himself, because the overwhelming, doomish presence of the Draka was too faint.

The tank surged up a small incline, looming over the Draka slaves, plowing them down as though they were no more substantial than shadows. Their mouths opened in bellows of agony as they succumbed to bullets or the front wheels of the tank, but their shouts were drowned out inside of the tank by the noise of the engine and the rasping static of the radio. Even when Rau's second companion screamed into his microphone and the speaker went dead, Hamilton couldn't hear anything from outside, only the rumble within.

The tank lurched to the left. Abruptly there were no more soldiers—nothing but a graded dirt roadway that led to some blurrily lit point in the near distance.

"Can you see that?!" shouted Rau. "Can you see?" 

"What?" Was he supposed to press the button now? But Rau grabbed his wrist.

"Look!" 

Now he could see it. In the distance, maybe a mile away, was a tower. It rose above everything else in a cocoon of gantries, harshly lit, like a rocket ready for a night launch.

"What is it?" Hamilton heard himself whisper, but Rau answered as if he'd spoken in a normal voice.

"It's a molehole," he said. "It's the tunnel between their world and yours." He let go of Hamilton's wrist and gunned the tank, faster and faster down the dark road.

For a minute, the road looked like a straight shot to the tower, but as they rumbled along, Hamilton could see silhouettes of entrenched defenses—cannon, he thought, and long, angular shadows of weapons he didn't recognize. The future, he thought. Is this what it's going to look like? He glanced at the bomb in the back of the tank and realized finally that Rau had volunteered him on a suicide mission, and the future, for him at least, would only be the length of time it took to get to the end of this dark and foreign road.

Rau took a sharp breath. "Can you smell them?" He hissed and stabbed a button on his console. Hamilton sniffed, but his heart was racing and he was breathing too fast to smell much of anything. A whiff of ozone caught him by surprise, deadening the pheromonic fears in his gut and he realized that the odor masked what he'd been aware of on a subconscious level.

Draka.

He stared out the window as the tank jerked and roared over the uneven terrain. They were out there—maybe dozens if not hundreds of them—waiting behind batteries of guns, or ready to step forward with their tiger teeth and overwhelming smiles.

Draka.

"How many do you think there are?" he said.

"They never send more than two or three on missions like this," said Hamilton. "Their slaves do all the work. That's why we even have a chance."

"Were you a slave?" said Hamilton.

"I was servus since I was born," hissed Rau. "Not anymore." He stabbed the ozone button again and again until the stink filled Hamilton's nose and mouth.

How did you get away? Hamilton wanted to know, but he didn't get a chance to ask. Rau gunned the engine and the tank bolted forward. Blades of blue light swung down like swords from overhead artillery. They traced across the hood of the tank and Rau swerved. The tank blundered as explosions ripped the road, blue flashes muffled by the engine and Rau's furious bellow. He dodged recklessly around sudden gaping holes and the tank banged and groaned as he manhandled it through spews of dirt. Hamilton kept his finger poised over the red bomb-button, his hand so stiff, it was cramping. He made a fist and held it over the button, keeping his eyes on the harsh lights of the distant gantry, which loomed over them now, so close and tall, he could no longer see the top of it through the windshield.

A barricade rose in front of them, lined across the top with men and artillery. Bright blue light washed across the hood and touched the windshield. The intensity half-blinded Hamilton and he threw his arm up to cover his eyes. The tank blundered and coughed and Hamilton felt the front end buckle as a tire blew despite its sheathing. Rau let out an animal cry and punched the accelerator to the floor. The high buttressed wall of Draka slaves and unrecognizable guns towered over them. Hamilton braced himself and the tank slammed against the wall. Rau hunched over his joystick, teeth clenched, forcing the engine, his face stained by red and green lights. The treads spun. The metal body groaned. For a moment, everything seemed suspended in the darkness, an impending disaster at pause for a single, fragile second. Then Rau jabbed a button on the control panel and launched the last missile at point-blank range.

The wall of men and artillery vanished in a blinding burst of light and heat. It resonated through the tank, through the ground, and into the roots of Hamilton's teeth. It made hot images inside his eyelids and when he could see again, Rau was driving, gunning the tank through twisted metal and ruined weaponry and barely recognizable bodies, heading for the gantried tower.

Now we've had it, thought Hamilton. "Where are they?" he said, and peered into the lights for some trace of even bigger guns, with all available Draka closing ranks to kill them once and for all.

"Can't you smell them?" hissed Rau.

Hamilton breathed deep, but he could not. The ozone stink in the cab overwhelmed everything. He glanced at Rau, whose face was bathed in sweat. He was gripping the joystick with both hands holding it with grim determination, as though it was burning his palms. The light from the molehole tower bathed his face in garish shades of black and white, but his eyes were huge and his pupils wide, despite the glare. To Hamilton's amazement, Rau let the tank roll to a stop.

"What're you doing?" whispered Hamilton.

Rau gave him a wild, harried look. "You can't smell them."

"No—how can you?" 

"I'm bred for them," said Rau. "You're not." He shoved himself out of the driver's seat and grabbed Hamilton, pulling him toward the joystick. "You have to drive. You understand? You have to."

"But I don't know—I mean where the hell are we going?" Hamilton slid behind the joystick. The seat felt hot and damp with sweat. He found the accelerator with his foot. The tank jerked and roared when he touched it, as responsive as an expensive sports car.

Rau pointed to a dark opening in the tower's floodlit exterior. "There," he said in a dull voice. "We're going in there." He made a fist and held it over the bomb-button. The fist shook like a leaf in a strong wind. "Go," whispered Rau. "Go!" 

Hamilton drove. The tank leaped forward as he leaned over the joystick. The deflated front tire made it difficult to steer but not impossible. He leaned against the pull and aimed the tank at the opening, which, he could see now was as big as the side of a barn. He had time to wonder if the tank was out of bullets as well as missiles before they surged into the bowels of the tower.

Dirt road turned to smooth pavement. The tank's lurching gait evened out into a bumpy ride. Hamilton craned his neck to see out the gritty windshield. Ahead and above them, some Frankensteinian mechanism rose through the interior of the tower, cupped in a curve of white walls which rose like a second sky. The machinery wound upwards like a twisted ladder from the bottom of this immense well. A molehole? Aptly named, thought Hamilton, and glanced ahead to see the Draka.

Three of them, all in black, standing between the tank and the molehole machinery.

Two women and a man. Five hundred meters away, Hamilton felt as though he could see every feature, every hair on their heads, every wrinkle of bad intent around their mouths. He could see how beautiful they were, how gentle they could be. He could almost smell . . . .

"Drive!" yelped Rau. "Just drive!"

Hamilton shoved the accelerator to the floor and the tank lurched forward, bumbling on its deflated wheel, faster and faster. The scent of flowers filled the cab, and he heard Rau take a gasping breath. With only a few hundred meters between them and the tank, the Draka, dead ahead, didn't budge.

What in heaven's name are you doing? said a kindly, concerned voice inside Hamilton's head, and the flower scent turned thicker.

Was that how they really sounded? thought Hamilton in surprise. How could he run down a being so gentle?

"Drive!" cried Rau, and huddled in his seat, fists pressed against his face, knees against his chin. "Drive!"

Hamilton looked down at his foot where it pressed the pedal to the floor. The smell in the cab changed ever so slightly to ferns and damp woodlands and he thought of the painting he'd torn to pieces at home after she had set foot in his apartment. He thought of the delicate flowers he'd spent hours feathering with the brush, and the lion lying peacefully in the shade. He thought of her and how she'd showed him the true face of his painted predators.

He looked up.

The Draka still hadn't moved. Beside him, Rau let out a sob of real anguish. The space between the tank and the smiling, black-clad tigers closed with dreamlike slowness. He could see their eyes now, brown and placid, so harmless when you saw them up close.

Stop, said the voice in his head.

"Stop," croaked Rau in the passenger seat. "Stop!" he shouted, and as the tank bore down on the immovable Draka, he screamed it, "STOP!" Hamilton pressed hard on the pedal and squeezed his eyes shut.

Did they leap aside, or was the clattering unevenness under the front tires made when he'd run them over, three at once? Hamilton had no idea, and there were no rearview mirrors to check the damage, but the voice in his mind vanished, and the smell of flowers in the cab abruptly seemed stale. He looked at Rau, and was amazed to see tears streaming down his face.

"Did I kill them?" demanded Hamilton, but Rau didn't say anything, just pointed to a red rectangle, directly under the climbing ladder of machinery and in the very center of the tower's floor.

"Hurry," he panted. "Before they realize what's happening."

Did the floor shake? Did the air seem to tremble? Hamilton aimed the tank for the red rectangle, even though he couldn't quite focus on it. A side effect of the Drakan pheromone attack, he thought and blinked hard to clear his vision, but the rectangle quivered before him like a mirage.

"What the hell?" he said and glanced at Rau for an explanation, but Rau was tapping buttons on the control panel. The quivering air thickened and Hamilton felt his stomach lurch. The tower itself seemed to vibrate. "What the hell's happening?" demanded Hamilton. He hit the brakes, but the tank rumbled forward without hesitation.

Rau reached behind him to make some adjustment to the bomb. Hamilton heard the casing snap, like a suitcase opening. "Now," Rau said in an almost reverent whisper, "you'll get a chance to see their world."

The front wheels of the tank touched the edge of the rectangle and Hamilton realized it wasn't a part of the floor at all. It was a hole. A deep hole. A deep red hole that plunged straight down to a distance he couldn't even judge.

The tank tipped forward. Hamilton let out a yell. Rau punched the red bomb-button and the top of the tank flew open. As the bomb ejected, Hamilton felt a weird surge of relief that they would fall away safely from the explosion and that this wasn't a suicide mission at all, but Rau's words echoed in his head—their world—and his heart contracted with terror.

He felt it when the bomb went off. Not a blast or a noise or even a feeling of being pushed from behind. He just knew, and as they fell through the expanse of red space, he could sense the tower collapsing, the disintegrating tangle of machinery—maybe even the parts of Baltimore above the Drakan burrows falling like some unlikely and unexplainable earthquake. He squinted at the thinning scarlet outside, and realized they were no longer underground. The were airborne, high in dense clouds.

"The molehole," said Rau. "It's falling in behind us."

"The bomb destroyed it?" said Hamilton. "But where are we now?"

"We're following the distortion in space and time—the hole—to its destination," said Rau, and he took a ragged breath. "You've saved your planet," he said. "You should be proud."

Hamilton peered out the window. Now he could see a wide sweep of grassy plains below them, and snowcapped mountains. The tank was descending, but not in an uncontrolled way. A shadow crossed his face and he glanced up to see stubby wings extending from behind the cab. He looked down again. Pristine rivers cut the side of a mountain. He could see a waterfall arcing down a green cliffside, limned with rainbows.

"This is their world?" he whispered.

Rau nodded wearily.

The tank-plane—whatever it was—swept lower over another wide savannah, and Hamilton could see animals. Horses, he thought, and marveled at the size of the wild herd as it galloped through lush grass. Then he thought he saw riders, but that wasn't right either. The bodies of the men and women and cavorting children emerged from where the horse's necks should have been. The riders and the horses were one being. Centaurs he thought in utter astonishment and stared until the herd was well behind them and his neck hurt from twisting at such an awkward angle.

"I just saw centaurs," he said to Rau, who just nodded, like this was nothing worth commenting on.

The tank swooped lower. They flew over a large watering hole filled with hippos, surrounded by zebras, punctuated at a distance by content-looking lions. The surreality and at the same time, the familiarity of the scene struck Hamilton like a blow to the chest. It could have been one of his paintings, spread out below in flesh and fur, water and mud.

He wanted to ask Rau where these creatures had come from, and how African animals and mythical beasts could coexist, or exist at all on what was supposed to be an alien planet as far as he knew, but the tank rushed over a pine forest, descended into a valley, and that was when Rau sat up straight. He broke into a relieved grin and pointed at the column of rising smoke in the distance.

"Look," he said. "The Samothracians are here."

In the valley, the remains of a village burned and smoked. Hamilton had a clear view of the human bodies scattered on the cobbled walks, blood draining down the hill in dark rivulets. The largest of the burning buildings was a tower, just like the one buried in the bowels of Baltimore, and it had crumbled to half its height. Gleaming winged vehicles, about the size of a small airplane swooped around the tower and cruised just above the ground, strafing survivors with startling blue bolts of light.

"What's going on?" he said. "The Draka did this?"

Rau shook his head. "This was a servus village. They were the molehole engineers. They're loyalists. They couldn't be spared. They would have fixed everything we destroyed."

He tapped the controls and the tank descended on its stubby wings, angling lower over the decimated houses and dead bodies. Hamilton could see children, limp on the ground like they were sleeping. There was a dead dog. Here was a roofless house with a garden in back. Someone had painted a mural on the back wall of the yard and Hamilton got a glimpse of it as the tank angled for a landing.

A black lion and a lamb with a curly white coat lay together in a bed of red roses, watching each other warily with the unmistakable expressions of predator and prey. Even from a distance Hamilton thought the work had the look of ironic parody. He glanced into the distance where the centaurs and lions and gazelles frolicked beyond the hills, then back to the blackened remains of the town below.

Not a peaceable kingdom in sight. Not now. Not ever.

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Framed