The Weapon - Resurrection - part 3
By Diana the Valkyrie
A walk in the park
Update: 12/05/2003 to valkyrie05



"Hello", said a voice behind me. Startled, I swung round from peering at the
restaurant, banging my head on the corner of the building. I was totally
disoriented, and I'd have fallen over, except that a hand on my shoulder
steadied me. "Hello," she repeated. With a massive effort of will, I managed
to control my bladder.

How did she get behind me? I must have somehow missed seeing her come out of
the restaurant. How did she do that? Invisibility? "Uh, uh," I said. I tried
to think of something intelligent to say. "Uh, hello", was the best I could
do. "What do you want?" she asked.

"Tuh, tuh. Tuh." Damn, I don't stutter. "To talk to you, I want to tuh talk to
you, I've got so many questions, please? Tuh, tuh. To talk with you? Tuh." She
stood there and regarded me. "You're over-excited, David. Let's walk a little,
you'll calm down. Follow me." She set off down the road. I hesitated just long
enough to get my head slightly straight, and trotted after her. I caught up in
a few moments, then walked alongside of her. How did she know my name?

"You guessed who I am, then," she said. "Yes," I replied, "you're The Weapon."
I waited for her to deny it, could I have been wrong? She glanced sideways at
me as we walked along. "Yes, I am. What do you want?" My heart fluttered
again. I've spent the last 23 years studying her, and now I can actually ask
her questions. It was like being able to ask detailed questions to Napoleon
about the Napoleonic Wars.

"Duh, duh, did you vanish? I mean, why did you disappear? And will you be
coming back? How did you know my name? Where did you go? Why are you working
as a waitress? What ..." she interrupted me. "Your name's on your credit card.
You do have a lot of questions, don't you? Let's go to a place where we can't
be overheard." I looked around us, we were walking west from Picadilly Circus.
She turned left, into Green Park, and I grabbed the sleeve of her coat. "We
can't go in there, at night! It's dark, it's dangerous, there's addicts and
muggers." She stopped and turned to face me. "Dangerous?" she asked. "Yes," I
nodded, "don't you read the newspapers?" "Dangerous for who?" she asked.

I looked up at her; even without heels she'd have been taller than me.
Although that's not difficult, most people were. "David, really. You think
anything bad could happen while I'm around?" Stupid of me. I was so used to
thinking of her as a symbol, I'd lost track of reality. This is the Guardian
of Humanity, a few muggers and addicts aren't going to be a problem. I shook
my head, silently, wishing I could for heaven's sake stop acting like such a
complete idiot.

We followed one of the gravel paths into the park. It was pitch dark in there,
and at this time of night, not a soul could be seen. I looked up, and I could
see a million stars; you can't usually see more than a few of the brightest
stars in London, because of all the ambient light. "Is that where you came
from?" I asked. She looked at me, and sat down on a park bench. I sat too,
facing her. I took a deep breath, and told myself to calm down. I tried to
pretend that I was talking to one of my postgraduate students. It didn't work.

"Why did you go?" I asked. That had to be the single most important mystery.
"I didn't. I've been here all along." "OK, but why didn't we see you doing the
things we'd come to expect of you?" She sighed.

"Two reasons," she said. She spoke so quietly I had to strain to hear, but the
park around us was totally silent, I could barely hear the hum of London
traffic. "I can't fly." "You can't fly?" I asked, doing my impression of a
complete fool again. She shook her head. "Why not?" "I don't know. I just
can't." "But you can, I've got video of you." "I could, but now I can't." I
stared at her. "From what I'd understood, nothing can harm you. How could you
lose the ability to fly?" "I don't know," she said.

"So is that such a big deal, anyway? I've never been able to fly, and I don't
find it a problem?" She was silent for a long time. Then she looked up at me.
"You don't miss what you never had. Imagine if you lost the use of your legs.
Only it's worse. I can't go to places I used to go to. I used to spend time in
the sun, where it's so quiet and peaceful, you can relax and dream; now I
can't. I used to be able to get halfway around the world in minutes; now the
only way I can travel that sort of distance is by airplane, which I can't do
because I cannot get a travel permit. I used to play tag with airforce jets.
Now, now. Now I ... Now I can't."

I stared at her as she continued. "If you lost the use of both your hands, you
could learn to write holding a pencil in your mouth. I had to learn how to
walk. I couldn't walk before, I just used to pretend I was walking, actually I
was flying while I was vertical, and I moved my legs to look like walking. Do
you have any idea how complicated it is to move using two legs? You spend all
your time balancing, staying upright, otherwise, you'd just topple over. Two
legs aren't stable, it's a dynamic equilibrium, you have to keep making tiny
movements to stay upright. All that balancing, weight shifting? It isn't
natural for me like it is for you. It took me six months to learn how to do
it, and I still fall over sometimes. I haven't even tried to run, you have to
take both feet off the ground at once. You learned when you were a baby, and
it's so deeply embedded in your brain, you can run up or down stairs without
even thinking about it. I have to stop when I get to stairs, take a careful
grip on the rail, and go up one step at a time."

"But surely you could still do the superhero thing? All your other abilities
...?" "I still have them. But think. Rescuing a kitten from a tree. If you can
fly, it's nothing. But what if you can't, and you're not too good at walking,
and as for climbing, forget it. Any ordinary guy with a ladder would be better
at kitten-in-tree than I would."

"OK, I see that, but what about ..." and I stopped. Anything that I could
remember that she'd done, the well-known rescues, fire-fighting, disaster aid
- they all involved flying, either to get there in time to do any good, or
else in dealing with the problems.

"I can't fly," she repeated, and she looked down at the grass, and her face
was so sad. And then another thought struck me. "So what will you do if the
galactic war comes here?" She put her hands over her face, and hunched over,
her face almost on her knees. And she shook her head. "I don't know," she
whispered, "God help you all, your Weapon can't fly. I'm no use at all."

There was a long silence, and then I remembered something she'd said. "You
said there where two reasons. What was the other one?"

She moved her hands, sat up straight, and looked at me. "He was my north, my
south, my east and west, my working week and my Sunday best, my noon, my
midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was
wrong." I half-recognised that, it was from a W F Auden poem, but I couldn't
remember the title, or how it went. "I don't understand," I said. She started
weeping. Very quietly. Her shoulders shook, and I watched the tears running
down her face. Then I remembered the title. "Funeral Blues"