Sheffield, Charles - Aftermath 1

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PROLOGUE

From the secret diary of Oliver Guest.

Entry date: June 14, 2026

The day I died: July 6, 2021. I remember it like yesterday.

I woke up a little after seven, though it might be more accurate to say that in

the final night of dreams I never slept. Sometimes I was with my darlings, all my

darlings. They were the same age at the same time, as they had never been in

life. They would be fourteen years old forever. I would see to that.

But I traveled into nightmares, too, whenever my thoughts drifted forward half

a day to imagine my final minutes. No Death Row, of course, and no march to

the scaffold, not in these enlightened times; rather, we would stroll together, I

and the observers and reporters and admirers and guards, to the Chamber of

Morpheus.

What wonderful things words are. Three-quarters of a century ago the suicide

flights of the Japanese Air Force became the kamikaze, the Heavenly Wind;

today the death cell and sleep without end become the Chamber of Morpheus.

But back to reality. I woke around seven on the morning of my last day, and by

eight they were at me again.

This time it was a short, neatly dressed man with a dark beard and a balding,

wrinkled brow. He entered the room where I struggled to swallow coffee and

toast-this condemned man, at least, ate no hearty breakfast-and he began,

"Oliver Guest-"

"Do I know you?"

"We have never met, no. I am Father Carmelo Diaz."

"I specifically said, no priests. I was promised no priests."

"I know. It is not as a priest that I come here."

An obvious falsehood. A true priest can no more decide to be a nonpriest than

a fish can decide to live out of water. But he went on with something of greater

possible interest, "I carry with me an offer from the Governor."

"Let me see it."

He shook his head. "Although I have the offer with me in writing, I would

rather first discuss it with you orally."

"No. Let me look at it. Then maybe we will talk."

With apparent reluctance, he reached into an inside pocket and handed over a

thin packet of papers. Official state seal. Governor's official letterhead, and

below it a certification that Carmelo Diaz was empowered to meet with Oliver

Guest and negotiate on behalf of the state. And, finally, an outline of the terms

of the offer.

While I was reading, I felt sure that Carmelo Diaz's eyes were in constant

motion, flickering from me to walls, to floor, to ceiling, and finally- irresistibly-

back to me.

I didn't have to watch Diaz to know this. I had seen the same behavior in a

hundred visitors. They were intrigued-and some offended-by the apparent

opulence of my living quarters. The furnishings were massive, immovably

attached to the floor, and finished in soft and expensive leather. The walls, all

the way up to the ten-foot ceiling, were covered in rich dark red velvet. Shoes

sank deep into the pile of the soft carpet. The lamps, all ceiling inlaid, could

dim or brighten at the touch of a button.

Less obvious-not obvious at all to me, until I did my own experiments-was the

room's harmless nature. Harmless, in the specific sense that a person in the

room would find nothing to permit self-damage or self-slaughter. Left to

explore the room, as I had been free to explore it, any visitor would finally

conclude that everything was innocuous with the exception-the eyes of

Carmelo Diaz, ever and always, came back to me-of the occupant.

I had no pen, of course, to sign anything. Nor would he have. Guards would be

brought in to provide a writing instrument if we reached some kind of

agreement.

That was a large if. I folded the three sheets of paper and handed them back to

Diaz.

"A model of vagueness, if you don't mind my saying so. The state wishes me to

give certain specific information. If I provide it, then certain vague concessions

will be offered to me as a quid pro quo."

"It was written that way at my request." Given the setting, Carmelo Diaz

seemed too much at ease. I wondered if he had been here before, dealing with

others on the threshold of the Chamber of Morpheus. The innocent blue eyes in

that rounded Celtish skull told me nothing. Apparent innocence itself meant

less than nothing, and all first impressions based on appearances alone are

likely to be deceiving. I, for instance, have features and build that appear

somewhat coarse, even loutish, while my nature is both sensitive and finicky.

"No two humans are identical," he went on. "Your needs and wishes do not

match those of the next man. You and I need room to maneuver, a freedom to

negotiate."

"Freedom is hardly a term that I would apply to my situation. Can you offer me

freedom?"

"You know that I cannot." There was a certain blunt charm to Father Carmelo

Diaz. I could imagine that, under other circumstances, he might make a fine

dinner companion. It must be one factor in his presumed successes.

"So what can you offer me?"

"Why don't we first confirm what the state asks of you?" And, when I said

nothing, "It is really very little. Your trial provided overwhelming evidence

that you murdered fifteen people. We wish to know if there were more."

"What makes you think there might be?"

"The chronological pattern. There are anomalously long gaps between cases

five and six, between eight and nine, and between twelve and thirteen."

"Perhaps I was busy with other matters. I had to earn a living, you know. A

man can't just go on having fun all the time."

It was said to test him, and I was pleased to see that he did not wince.

"Do you have other suggested victims?" I went on. "It is hardly useful to

propose gaps, unless you have people to fill them."

"I suspect that you, Dr. Guest, know these statistics far better than I do. But let

me state them for the record." It was his first suggestion that we were being

recorded, though I of course had assumed it.

"Confining ourselves to this population area alone," he went on, "an average

of thirty thousand fourteen-year-olds run away each year. Most return home in

due course, but close to one-sixth of them remain unaccounted for. Of those, let

us assume that only one child in a thousand possesses that standard of

physical beauty which satisfies your apparent need. There would still be a

suitable candidate, every couple of months, whose permanent disappearance

would be indistinguishable from all the rest."

The thing I liked about Carmelo Diaz was his matter-of-fact manner. No

weeping and wailing and accusations from him about the "poor, helpless

doomed children." No suggestions that I was the devil incarnate. It made me

wonder if, deep inside, he carried the same needs. He was deliberately, and

successfully, matching his speech patterns to my own.

I didn't let any of this influence me. I learned, long ago, how easy it is to find in

others a false resemblance to oneself.

"That's all you are asking?" I said. "If there were others?"

"Well, not quite." He hesitated. "You chose such beautiful children, such

models of physical perfection. We would like to know who the others were, and

where their bodies can be found."

So far it had all been one-sided. Time to change that. "You have told me what

you want," I said. "Now tell me what you can offer in return, were I to give it to

you."

"If you provide the names of the others whom you killed, and tell us where their

bodies are hidden, I will seek a reduction in your sentence."

And then, of course, it was my turn to smile. "A reduction. Very fine. Father

Diaz, I am thirty-six years old. What would be your estimate of my life

expectancy?"

"Fifty years. Maybe as long as seventy."

"Very good. I agree with that. But I was sentenced to fifteen consecutive

sentences of forty years each. That's a total of six hundred years of judicial

sleep, a coma during which I will age at my normal rate. I will not live to serve

even two of those fifteen sentences. So what are you telling me? That you can

commute the total to twenty years? That you can arrange for all the terms to be

served concurrently?"

"I can do neither one."

"So what can you do?"

"I can try to arrange for you to be placed in abyssal rather than judicial sleep.

I can make no absolute guarantees, but at the reduced body temperature your

rate of aging will decrease." He paused. "Or so I am told."

I felt almost sorry for the man. They had sent him to me so inadequately briefed.

And then my sense of caution cut in. He was too innocent, too poorly informed.

"Father Diaz, how much do you know about my professional line of work?"

"Very little." He was sensitive, exceptionally so, and his voice suggested that

somewhere in the last few seconds the conversation had turned, and he knew it.

"Before your arrest you were a medical doctor. One, I gather, of high

reputation."

"Perhaps. But not as a physician who treated sick patients. I have always been

in research-and my particular line of research is in life-extension procedures.

Although my primary thrust is not the study of abyssal sleep, I have done work

in that field. I can assure you that the rate of aging of a subject in abyssal

sleep, under optimal circumstances, is reduced by a factor of at most three.

Even in AS I would die of old age before my sentence was one-third over."

His eyebrows raised, and he looked not at me, but up at the ceiling.

"That is AS as you know it today," he said at last. "But in twenty years time, or

thirty, who knows? Do you not have faith in science? Science advances."

"And sometimes, it retreats. As you say, who knows? In twenty years,

civilization itself may collapse. In thirty years, the world could be

unrecognizable. "

I make no claim of prophecy with those statements. I was just making

conversation, keeping my mind away from the subject of the close of day and

the beginning of endless night.

Father Diaz, a Jesuit by training if ever I saw one, did not allow himself to be

diverted. "Science advances," he repeated. "You are a logical man, Dr. Guest.

You understand the odds. On the one hand, we have possible progress in AS

that grants you a chance-albeit a small one-of living through your entire

sentence and beyond. On the other hand, without some kind of negotiated

settlement you face mandated judicial sleep until your body expires of natural

old age."

On most matters I was, as he said, a logical man. I was also a man with no

alternative offer. At the very least, I would see this through the next stage.

I nodded. "Let us obtain writing materials."

"There are others?"

"There are. Three, as you surmised. I will provide you with names, and with

locations, and with dates."

I had my own agenda. Father Diaz was tolerable company. If he left, I would be

open to invasion by others more doubtfully acceptable.

I gave him what he had asked, names and places and dates. He stayed, as the

hours wore on. At my request, a chess set was brought in and we played three

games. One win, one loss, and one draw. A fair reflection, I thought, of the

result from our other game.

We ate a simple lunch of cheese and onion sandwiches. I, to my surprise, had a

fair appetite.

And then, sooner than I thought possible, two o'clock was approaching.

"Do you propose to stay to the end?" I asked.

He nodded. "Unless you have an objection."

"No prayers, then. No last-minute attempts to save my soul."

"I cannot save another's soul. Only the person can do so."

It was the closest he had come to priest talk, and a good thing, too. He seemed

resigned to the fact that I was not about to discuss the logic of my choice of

victims.

"We must soon be going," Diaz continued. He gestured toward the door of my

room, where a face was visible at the grille. "It will be better if you leave this

room voluntarily, and are able to walk without assistance or coercion."

"Certainly."

I was, in fact, preternaturally calm. In retrospect, a sense of the unreality of

events had surely overtaken me. Who can accept the idea, viscerally rather

than intellectually, that this is to be the last conscious half hour ever, in a

universe destined to endure for tens of billions of years? Carmelo Diaz had

promised to do his best on my behalf, but I put no stock in his success-either

intellectually or viscerally.

We walked, side by side but far from alone. All the way along the corridor, with

its dull gray walls and infrequent locked doors of bright blue, others paced

before and behind us.

No one spoke. The whole building was as quiet within as it would be without.

Judicial sleep, which killed no one until they expired of natural causes, had

ended the long rhetoric about capital punishment. No one would be outside,

chanting their scripted slogans.

Actually, I am not sure there would have been any sad songs for me, even in the

good old days of Sparky and Slippery Sam. So far as most people were

concerned I deserved the electric chair or the lethal injection-probably both.

After my capture I had followed the news reports. I was a child killer, the worst

one in decades.

All a perversion of reality, and quite unfair.

The door of the Chamber of Morpheus stood open. It was flanked by guards, all

unarmed. Should I prove violent, no one wanted to kill me accidentally and

destroy the notion that this was a civilized and even kindly proceeding.

I walked forward and sat down on the soft black cushions of the room's single

chair. Leg and arm braces clicked into position. Everyone remained at a

respectful fifteen feet, until at last one woman moved forward to stand in front

of me. Much to my surprise, I recognized the Governor.

"Do you," she asked, "wish to make any final statement?"

I shook my head.

"I am told that you were a man with great gifts, Oliver Guest," she went on.

"You had the power to do great good, and you did great evil from choice. Your

punishment does not begin to match the dreadful nature of your offense. God

have mercy on your soul."

She stepped back to join the ring of people, while I wondered what that was all

about. Then I had it. We were just two months away from elections. For

Governor Jensen this was just another media opportunity. Her comments made

a brief nod to the scientific community, pointed out that she was strong on law

and order, and reassured the religious that she was one of them.

It was tempting to speak my thoughts-what had I to lose? But beside her,

Carmelo Diaz watched intently. Without Governor Jensen's blessing, there was

no way he could keep his end of the bargain.

On with the show.

I survey the room. Even without a special reason for knowledge I would be

familiar with this chamber. It is a nightmare from everyone's childhood. I stare

at the big clock. One fifty-five. The gray circular wall and the white sky of the

ceiling is as distant to me now as the remotest galaxies. Above me, a silver

hoop slowly descends to encircle my seated body at midchest. Everything is

done automatically, without human involvement.

"He who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone." So no one will be

responsible for what comes next. The cool injection carrying me to the

undiscovered country is controlled by the Chamber of Morpheus's central

computer, a device close to human in intelligence but untroubled by human

doubts or conscience.

One fifty-seven. Most condemned prisoners, I had learned, close their eyes as

the hoop settles into position. I stare, unblinking, as the green syringe extends

itself and sits waiting by my upper left arm.

One fifty-eight. Everything can begin, I am ready. But procedure must be

followed. I watch the slow sweep of the second hand, marking the countdown

to the end of the universe. There ought to be music, the sound of trumpets or

perhaps a Dies Irae. But music is not permitted in the Chamber of Morpheus.

Instead there is total silence, the audience hushed and rigid.

Twenty seconds. The end of the needle, so fine that it fades to invisibility,

touches my arm. I flinch. The descent into judicial sleep is supposed to be

painless-but on whose testimony?

The clock readout reaches two o'clock-and moves past it. Five seconds. Ten. I

sit a little straighter, convinced that something has gone wrong and the

journey to Lethe is delayed.

And then I realize that the injection was made exactly on schedule. I had not

felt it, but I am moving, expanding, ascending on pink clouds of glory. The

chamber, far below me, fades out of sight.

The forever sleep has begun.

IN THE BEGINNING

First Strike. February 21, 2026; Kimberleys Plateau, Western Australia.

It was evening, but it was not dark. Would darkness ever come again?

Wondjina crawled from the shadow of the rocks and peered north and west. No

clouds were in the sky, and the Sun was on the horizon. Soon it should be night,

cooling the desert and bringing longed-for relief.

But there would be no night; soon, again, would come the Rival.

Wondjina turned to face south and east. A hint of pink was already on the

skyline, warning that the Rival was alive in the heavens and about to rise in the

cloudless sky. If Wondjina were to find water it was best to seek it at this time, in

the cooler hour before the Rival usurped the Moon and evening turned again to

day. It must be done quickly. Thirst was all through him, weakening his muscles

and stiffening his joints.

He made his way to the dried-out riverbed and walked along it, seeking patches

of sun-seared grass. Under the grass, deep in the gravel, he would find the water

that fed their roots. There, and nowhere else.

For twelve days, the Rival had risen as the Sun set.

Between them, Sun and Rival seared the land and drew off every hint of surface

moisture. Without dark there could be no night, without night there would be no

midnight fall of dew. And the deep waters were running dry.

Wondjina took the trowel from his waist sling and started to dig in the gravel of

the watercourse. From time to time he laid down the tool, picked up the hollow

reed, and pushed it deep. He sucked hard on the other end.

Nothing, and still nothing. Every day, the reed had to be pushed deeper. Dig

again, dig harder. Finally, after ten minutes of hard effort, a few mouthfuls of

warm, brackish liquid.

He straightened and stared again to the south. The Rival had lifted above the

horizon. Now it was a dazzling blue-white point too bright to look at. There was

no circle of light, like the Sun's disk, but when the Rival was high in the sky it

threw down its own intense spears of heat.

This torment could not last. Or if it did, Wondjina's family would not be here to

see it. They would leave, heading away to seek help from lowland strangers.

Wondjina would not leave. He was old, and he would live or die in the homeland.

But he could not survive like this. Hunger and thirst gnawed within him.

Midsummer was long past, and the Sun was on its annual journey north. Heat

should be lessening, rain should carry in on the west wind. But not this year.

Twelve days ago the Rival had appeared in the night sky. Darkness became a

memory. The heat steadily increased, a dry wind blew from the south. No animal

moved across the red sands. Even the tough, leathery grass had wilted.

Wanderers through the homeland brought word of other changes. Lake Argyle,

the great water far to the north, had dried completely for the first time in many

years. Far south, the Ord River ran low in its course. The Rival's presence was

felt, north or south, as it was here. You could not run from it, any more than you

could escape by flight from the Sun itself.

Wondjina, the family's living memory of older times, knew what must be done.

The answer was not to flee. It was to ask the spirits of cloud and rain to bring

relief.

Ask now, ask tonight. The family was determined to leave tomorrow.

He squatted onto his haunches and rubbed the wrinkled skin of his knees.

Everywhere was reddish, powdery dust, worse than at any time in his long

memory. He opened the woven bag, took out the necklace of dried bones and

the bright-stained sections of emu shell. Let the youngsters speak of new ideas,

of their belief that the Rival was nothing more than a star suddenly grown great.

What did they know? Not one of them could recite a history of the family, not

one had learned the modes of address to the spirits of autumn rains.

First, there was the choice of site. Level and high and on the open plateau, where

the Rival would always be in sight.

Wondjina began to ascend the course of the dried-out streambed. He climbed

slowly and carefully, leaning on his ironwood spear for support. Hunger had

weakened his limbs, but he must husband his strength for the ceremony. The

Rival lay directly ahead, its southern fire striking matching points of light from

sharp-sided pebbles in the watercourse. Was it imagination, or did the intruder

tonight flame brighter yet, putting the vanished Sun to shame?

A slender gray-green lizard darted from under Wondjina's feet, scrambling uphill.

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V1.1Spellcheckdone,stillneedsproofreadV1.0scannedbyFaile,stillneedsacompleteproofread.PROLOGUEFromthesecretdiaryofOliverGuest.Entrydate:June14,2026ThedayIdied:July6,2021.Irememberitlikeyesterday.Iwokeupalittleafterseven,thoughitmightbemoreaccuratetosaythatinthefinalnightofdreamsIneverslept.Sometimes...

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Sheffield, Charles - Aftermath 1

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