The Weapon - Oblivion  - part 13

By Diana the Valkyrie

I surrender

Update: 11/08/2003 to valkyrie05





David:



Up, up and away. She lifted me up into the air so fast, Jim must have thought

we'd just vanished. At about a thousand feet, my stomach caught up with the

rest of me, and we hit low cloud, and plunged into it, flying blind. But I

wasn't worried, there aren't any buildings in London that are that high, and

the chance of hitting an airplane was near-zero. Plus, I guessed that Wendy

would have some blind-navigation system. "Wendy, I don't think you should have

handed out that second feather, after you saw what happened the first time."

"Fair do's, David. If I gave one to his competitor, I had to do the same for

him." "But do you think he was actually any help?" "Well, I did enjoy the

bridge tournament" "I didn't know you played." "I didn't, until just now."

"But you were pretty good, I've never even heard of the Devil's Coup."

"Practice practice practice, baby. Play ten thousand hands, and you'd be

pretty good too." "When did you play ten thousand hands?" "Just after he asked

us to play, and just before I said yes."



Ah, now I understood that slight hesitation when she'd agreed to play. That

was Wendy reading a bunch of books on the subject, searching the net, and then

playing ten thousand hands. "You know Wendy, if I had to choose one word to

describe you, it would be 'capable'" "Oh, she replied, "I was hoping it would

be 'sexy'"



Well, that too, yes.



"So do you think that helped?" "Not in the slightest," she answered, "there's

a billion different gods, if I prayed to each of them and sacrificed a virgin

cow - where appropriate - all it would do is distract me from the problem. And

I really didn't like McPherson's idea that what I really needed was help in

accepting the inevitable."



We got home, and I headed straight for bed. Wendy let me go on ahead; I didn't

know why until she made an entrance. She had her wings fully deployed, or at

least she did just after she got through the door, and she glided around the

room a couple of times while I gazed, entranced. She'd adjusted her wingspan

to the size of the bedroom, and although I knew intellectually that the wings

played no part whatsoever in her flying, the illusion was stunning, and

totally convincing. Wendy's nakedness made it ten times better.



"Angels don't go naked," I called out to her. "I'm no angel," she laughed.

"Fallen angels don't either," I continued. "I'll fall on you," she threatened,

and swooped low over me. I ducked to get out of her way, and she glided past.

Next time she came round, I made a grab for her, but she rose a couple of feet

and evaded my hands. Before I could get into position for another grab, she'd

circled the room, and she came up behind me. I felt a push from behind, and

toppled over, face down on the duvet. I heard her laugh as she flew past, and

came round for another pass. I lay doggo until she was almost overhead, and

then I suddenly reached up for her, and managed to grip an ankle as she went

by.



Big mistake. It was a bit like grabbing a locomotive as it steams past. You

don't slow down the train, but it nearly tears your arm from its socket. I let

go, but my timing was bad; we weren't over the bed any more, and I was headed

for a tumble to the floor. Fortunately it's carpeted, so I wasn't expecting

more than a bruise or two; I brought my hands up instinctively to protect my

head. But I didn't hit the floor; by the time I'd fallen those few feet, Wendy

had circled the room again, and dived under me. I found myself lying on top of

her, on her back, with those great white wings flapping slowly up and down on

either side of me. Then, as she circled round and passed the bed again, she

did a half roll, dumping me off her back onto the bed. I grabbed a pillow and

swung it hard at her as she came round for another pass; swung ... and missed

as she took evasive action with another half-roll, pulled the pillow out of my

hands as she swept by, and while I was staring at her as she came round, I got

a facefull of pillow. One more circle, and she landed on top of me, flattening

me onto the mattress.



"I surrender," I said.



"You're learning," she answered, and then neither of us said much for a while,

because our mouths were too busy.



The wings were gone now, and she was wearing a white silk nightgown, very

flowing, trimmed with gold lace, and with a peignoir, like a translucent cape.

She held me in her arms, and her peignoir wrapped itself around us both, just

like her cape does.



"David, Duncan wants me to tell you something." I looked up at her. "What?" "I

didn't want to tell you, but Duncan says you really ought to know." "What?"

"It hurts. Oh David, it hurts, hurts a lot." "What does?" "My head. No, not my

head, I don't have a head really. My brain. If I had a brain. I mean, inside

me, it hurts where I do the thinking and stuff." "I thought nothing could hurt

you? At least, physically?"



"Not true, David. Nothing can damage me, but I can feel pain. I mean, I can be

damaged, but it's temporary, I can repair. The pain is an interrupt, to get my

attention despite me doing other stuff, so I know there's been damage and I

need to repair it. That's why I feel pain - why you do too, actually. So, if

you shoot me with a gun, I know I've been shot, and I can repair it so fast

you can't see any damage, that's why you think I don't get damaged. But this -

I don't know what needs repairing, and it just hurts. And it doesn't stop, it

keeps on hurting, it's been like this for weeks and weeks now, and it isn't

getting any better. I'm sure it's part of the memory problem." I agreed, it

had to be all one thing. But what? We were no further forward at all; we still

didn't know what the problem was, let alone how to fix it. And she was scared,

and hurting. I couldn't bear it.



You know what it's like when a child is hurt? And you can't explain why, and

you can't stop the pain, and the child says "Momma, make the pain go away."

And you can't, and you feel so helpless. Well, that's how I was feeling now.

To Wendy, pain was just a signal to tell her to fix a problem; once the

problem was fixed, the signal cleared. We get used to pain from an early age;

all those scrapes and bruises teach us that pain is part of our life. Pain and

forgetting, we think that they are curses, but actually they are blessings.

The pain of a burned hand teaches us very quickly to be careful with fire, and

forgetting is part of the process for dealing with physical and emotional

pain. For Wendy, this was all new. And the usual drugs that reduce pain -

aspirin, codeine, and in severe cases, the opiate drugs - none of those would

work on her.



But there was one thing that I could do to help; the same thing you do with a

child in pain. "Come here, Wendy," I said, and I held her and stroked her

hair, kissed her and told her I loved her.



After a while of this, she asked me "We've done two churches, are we going to

do the Church of the Holy Guardian some time this week?" "We can if you like,

Wendy, but I think all they'll do is tell you to pray to yourself, which would

be a bit silly." She thought about that for a little while. "Why is that

silly?" she asked.



"Well, because." I said, and stopped. Hmm. It seemed obvious to me, but

sometimes obvious things aren't actually true. "Can you grant prayers?" I

asked. "I don't think so," she said, "but I don't think anyone else can

either, so why is it any sillier than praying to anyone else? Besides, they

might tell me something else entirely. Maybe they'll have an idea no-one else

has, because they've been thinking about me so much."



I thought, yes, these are the people who think there's a Planet of the

Guardians where good people go when they die. "Even if they are completely

wrong about the Planet of the Guardians," she said, "that doesn't mean they

can't be right about other things." I swear, she has to be able to read my

mind, even though she keeps saying she can't. "Don't be silly, of course I

can't," she said. "Wendy, stop it, you're just teasing me again. OK, we'll go

see the Church of the Holy Guardian; just don't say anything that destroys all

their illusions." "Why not?" she asked, "if they're full of nonsense, it would

be doing them a favour." "Why not, is for the same reason you don't tell young

children that there's no Santa Claus. If they're getting a lot of pleasure out

of a myth, and not doing any harm, why not let them keep it?" "I suppose," she

said, "but ... oh, all right."



"Wendy, how much does it hurt?" "I don't know." "What do you mean, you don't

know? It's your head, or whatever, of course you know." "But I don't have

anything to compare it to. I mean, I can't say it's worse than a stubbed toe

but not as bad as toothache. And even if I could, how do I calibrate my

feeling of pain against yours?"



This was that lack of common experience again. "What does Duncan say?" "He

can't feel it, I'm not passing it on to him." Yes, of course, she wouldn't let

him suffer her pain. "Does it hurt all the time?" "No, it sort of comes and

goes in waves." Sounds like a bad toothache. "Sometimes it distracts me from

thinking." Like a very bad toothache. "Oh, Wendy." I hugged her some more.

What else can you do?



I stroked her hair some more, and a few of her hairs came adrift, and I saw

them fall slowly though the air. "Wendy, did you know you've got a few hairs

coming out?" "Mmmph," she said, muffled by the hug. "No, Wendy, this is wrong,

surely your hair shouldn't come out at all?" She looked up at me. "Don't

worry, David, that's not a problem. If my hair were fine and unbreakable, and

you stroked it, you'd cut your fingers quite badly. So if you start putting

your hand though it, I make it a little bit coarser and breakable, so you

don't hurt your hand."



I worried myself to sleep that night. Not only did we have that three-month

deadline looming up, but now I find out she's in constant pain from it. What

*is* this thing? How could she go so badly wrong? Is it some physical problem,

like a broken arm, or a parasite, like a virus? Or was this actually a

psychological problem, like her loss of flight had been?



We clutched at each other for comfort that night, her smell and the sound of

her heart helped me get to sleep. My last thought, before I dropped off, was

to wonder how I would cope if the worst came to the worst.