The Weapon - Resurrection - part 10
By Diana the Valkyrie
Get the fuck out of my kitchen
Update: 26/05/2003 to valkyrie05



By the time I got in there with her, she'd changed. It seems that her chef's
outfit is her Weapon costume, plus a white hat to keep her hair in, although I
did kind of wonder if she really needed that, since it wasn't actually hair.
Plus an apron that said "Get the fuck out of my kitchen". And she was rattling
the saucepans around like she knew what she was doing. One pan of water was
already boiling - I couldn't see how it could have heated up so fast - and she
added some salt to it. "Wendy, " I repeated, "I haven't got any rice." "Minor
problem," she said. She reached her hand behind herself, under her cape, then
brought it out again, and opened her fist. "Voila," she said, "rice."

How did she do that? There's no way she could have been carrying rice around
with her, is there? I knew she used to do conjuring tricks, and that's no big
deal, lots of people can make coins and suchlike appear and disappear. But I
couldn't for the life of me see how that could be a conjuring trick. She
dropped the rice into the boiling water, and said "Now, how hot do you like
your curries?" "Er, pretty mild, really." "I'll have to get you trained,
David."

She started to melt some butter in another saucepan. "I have no spices," I
reminded her. She looked at me and sighed. "Look, if you're just going to hang
about making negative remarks, why don't you go do something constructive,
like typing up your notes?" I think she was telling me to get the fuck out of
her kitchen.

I can take a hint. I've just been thrown out of the kitchen. I can live with
that. I went back to the study, and started to transcribe the PDA, making
notes about bits that I thought were especially significant. As usual, I got
immersed in the job, and lost track of time until I heard the dinner-gong.

Dinner-gong? I don't own a gong.

So I went to see what was going on. She'd set out the table, and was sitting
waiting for me to join her. I sat down, and she waitressed round me with the
plates and the food.

"Yum," I said on the first mouthful, wondering if the fire on my tongue could
ever be extinguished. "My, that's tasty." She sat down opposite me, and looked
a little anxious. "You like it?" she asked. Uh. Careful now. Don't want to
upset her, mustn't lie, she'll know if I lie to her. "Well, it's a little bit
spicier than I'm used to, but if I eat it slowly with plenty of water ..." She
looked relieved. "How about you," I asked, "aren't you going to eat?" "No,"
she said. "You've already eaten?" "I don't eat, David, I don't need to eat. Or
drink, or sleep, or ... well, lots of things." "But last night, you slept with
me!" "No, I didn't. You slept, I was lying near you, it made me feel less
lonely. And I tried to pretend that you were Duncan, but that didn't work. You
humans can lie to yourselves, I never got the hang of that, it's one of those
alien things I can't do. How do you do that?"

"So what were you doing while I was asleep," I asked. "Remembering. Crying a
bit." "Do you always cry when you remember?" "Not always. I've got a lot of
happy memories, and I often play those back." Digital memory, no losses. "And
sad?" "I've only got one sad memory, and I wish I didn't, but I can't help
remembering it, and that's when I start crying." I didn't like to ask what the
sad memory was, but it seemed obvious to me that it would be the death scene.
Imagine being doomed to watch the death of your loved one, over and over, in
perfect detail. Every night.

Curry. I'm obviously going to have to learn to like curry. "Where did you get
the dinner gong from?" "Oh, it's one we had on the Island, I just played you a
recording." Digital memory. She does these things so casually. And when she
explains them, well, the fact is, I could record a dinner gong on my PDA and
play it back, it really was no big deal. But she keeps doing stuff like that.
Where did the rice come from? And the spices? What was I actually eating here?
"Now you go and write up your notes while I do the dishes." "I'll help with
the dishes." I know that's the right thing to say. "Don't be silly, you'll
just get in my way. And who do you suppose did the dishes in the restaurant
where I worked?" "All the more reason for me to help with them now." "No."
"But Wendy, ..." "No." It was those flat "no"s again, how do you argue with
them? And I have to confess, washing-up isn't something I'd fight to do more
of. "OK, you win," I said, and retreated back to the study, to try to distill
everything I'd learned in the last 24 hours into lists and tables. By golly
there would be a world-shaking academic paper out of this! Never mind "The
semiological effect of the Guardian mythos", I could do "The Weapon returns!".
Well, I could if I could persuade her to return.

So then I tried to sort out my plans for the future. Healing up this open
wound was obviously the first priority, getting her to see that the heaven
myth was just one of many, and not necessarily the true one. And that Duncan
wasn't sitting playing a harp, singing hymns and pining for her arms around
him; he was dead and buried. Sad, but that's how things are. Also I wanted to
convince her that if there were such things as souls, then hers was as good as
mine. You don't have to be made of meat to own a soul, surely. And how would
some human priest have a valid opinion on that?

Then the second thing on the agenda was to find out how on earth she'd managed
to lose her ability to fly. She was supposed to be impervious to damage, so
how could that have happened? Did it mean that she might lose other powers?
Was there any way she could regain her flying ability? So, those were the top
two items on the agenda, and they were both for her benefit, which made me
feel a lot better about the third item on my list.

I might be a chalky-grey academic, but when someone as extraordinarily
attractive as Wendy walks past, even I notice. And she hadn't just walked
past, I'd been held close to her and warmed by her body heat, which meant I'd
felt her, well, her, er, she wasn't exactly unshapely, I mean. Well. Anyway.
Let's try not to think about that, I mean those, or I'll never get anything
done.

I'd been saved from a mugging by her and, let's not forget, I'd actually spent
a night in the same bed as her. I knew she wasn't looking at me that way, I'm
not a complete idiot. But a guy can't help wanting. And dreaming. After all,
Duncan wasn't exactly an Adonis, and look how she felt about him. And then,
fourth on my list, and I felt slightly guilty for putting it lower down than
my own selfish desires, but hey, that's how I felt ... fourth on my list was
to see if there was any way she could get back to being The Weapon, the
Guardian of Humanity, because the impact on world morale would be enormous
(see my paper op. cit.).

And then, fifth on the list, came pure research. If anyone had ever tried to
find out what she was, how she worked, stuff like that, then they hadn't
published anything. I guessed that Duncan must have known a lot, but that
didn't do any good. It's publish or perish in this neck of the woods. For
example, how did she fly? Where did that rice come from? How did her cape
work, it seemed to do whatever she wanted. Lots and lots of questions like
that were buzzing around my brain, and I had to keep swatting them, because I
wanted to ask the important stuff first.