The Weapon - Genesis - part 1
By Diana the Valkyrie
My strength is your strength. My power is your power. I will love you and protect you and obey you. Until the end of time


He was hungry, he was tired, his knee hurt, and he was thoroughly fed up.
Hungry because he was dieting hard, trying to lose some of the extra flab that
the doctor told him was bad for his heart. Tired because he was working hard,
trying to stay on top of his job in this time of recession and downsizing. And
fed up, because where was this going? At forty-seven, he was junior management
at a small company, not on the way up, nothing great to look forward to, no
mark made on the world. Hair going a bit grey, and in his more honest moments
he could admit to a certain thinness on top, plus his left knee wasn't what it
used to be, especially when he sat down or stood up, he could never be sure
that it was going to do what it was supposed to. Which was another reason for
trying to lose some weight.

His sex life was non-existent, his social life not much better, and his
intellectual life revolved around the office. The only physical work he did
was in his vegetable garden, and the results of that lasted until he ate them.
And this bloody report was just going on and on, a stream of turgid
incomprehensible third-person-passive prose that realistically no-one would
ever read. What's the point, he thought. Mid-life crisis, he thought. The
point in your life when you know you're going to be, if not a failure, then
most definitely not a success.

The phone rang. For a few rings, he thought, double glazing again, I won't
answer. Then his curiosity killed his inertia, and he picked up the handset.
"Hello?" "Hi". A female voice. He ran through the possibilities in his head -
no match. "Who's that?" "Duncan?" "Yes, who's that?" He was starting to think
double glazing again. "Duncan, I need to meet with you, could I see you for
lunch today?" "Er, yes, sure." Can't be double glazing, doesn't sound like
telesales. Maybe someone he knew a long time ago? "Who is this?" "Can we meet
at the Toledo cafe, one o'clock?" "Yeh, sure, what's this about please? And
who are you? And ..." Click. Purr. Who the hell was that?

He finished his breakfast, and got the number 13 bus to work. He thought about
the phone call as the bus fought its way through the morning rush hour, but
then he forgot all about it until lunchtime rolled around, and then he walked
across to the Toledo, wondering whether he was going to recognise her. He sat
down at one of the tables, ordered a mug of coffee and sandwiches, and looked
around. Since he didn't know what he was looking for, he didn't know that the
woman walking towards him was the one, until she sat down. "Hi, Duncan", she
said.

She wasn't young, she wasn't old. Mid forties, he thought. Someone I knew when
I was a teenager, maybe? He searched his memory - no match again. "Yes, that's
me, but I don't know you, do I?" "No," she said. "You don't." There was a
silence. She beckoned a waitress over. "Coffee please."

"So here we are." "Yes, here we are." "I still don't know who you are." "No,
you don't, do you. Look, Duncan, I'm sorry, this is more difficult than I
thought it would be. I don't know where to start." "Begin at the beginning."
"Go on till you get to the end" "Then stop" They grinned at each other. "Do I
call you Alice?" "No." "Then what's your name?" "I don't have a name."

He shook his head. "Come on, just your first name will do." "No, really. I
don't have a name. It's, well. It's. Oh hell, I never thought this would be
quite so difficult." "Well, just spit it out." "I can't." "Why not?"
"Credibility." "You what?" "There's no point in me telling you something that
you would instantly not believe. I have to go at this slowly." He leaned back
in his chair, munching a sandwich.

"Look," she said. "I can't show you what I want to show you, so I'll have to
show you something small, then later on I'll be able to show you more." He
sighed. "Look, lady, I've lost the thread here, I have no idea what you're
talking about." He looked at his watch, a gesture that people use to mean "I'm
not actually going to say this out loud, but I'm starting to think it was time
I wasn't here." She saw the gesture, and decided that it was now or never.

She reached out her hand, and touched the base of his coffee mug. She raised
her arm, still touching the base of the mug; the mug rose with her finger. She
wasn't holding the mug, just touching it with her finger. Then she rotated her
arm, twisting it like you'd twist a screwdriver, and the mug rotated till it
was upside down. The coffee didn't spill. She rotated it right-way-up, and
then lowered her finger; the mug followed.

"Nice trick." "Yeah." He looked at the coffee cup. Picked it up. Stirred it
with the spoon. Took a sip. Put it down. "How'd you do it?"

"Duncan, I need to have a serious talk with you. Could I come visit you this
evening?" He looked at her, considering. It's not like he had a heavy social
calendar. "Sure," he said. "Tell you what. Make it seven, and we can go out
for a curry or something, hey?" She smiled. "That would be nice," she said,
"thank you." "OK, I'll write down my address for you" "I already know your
address, I phoned you, remember?" "Oh, right. OK, seven then. And what's your
name?" "I don't have a name." "Well, what do I call you?" "Maybe we'll talk
about that this evening." She stood up. "Until then, then." She walked out.

He finished his coffee and sandwiches, examining the cup carefully when it was
empty. It looked just like any other coffee mug - inside, outside, handle. But
he'd seen ... or had he? It's so hard to be sure that what you see is really
what happened. The eye-brain system has a tendency to see what it expects, not
what is. But he hadn't been expecting an inverted coffee cup with the coffee
not pouring out, so how could that work? He shrugged, paid at the counter, and
went back to work.

* * *

When he got home that evening, it was gone six o'clock. He made himself a cup
of coffee as soon as he got in, and dumped his briefcase on the table. For
once, though, he wasn't going to spend the evening slogging away at some
boring report. For the first time for as long as he could think, he had a
date! OK, she wasn't exactly some gorgeous honey, but when you're middle aged
yourself, and to be brutally honest not actually middle aged but a bit over
the hill, and tubby, not what you'd call hugely overweight, but distinctly
portly, a definite roundness to the old waistline. Oh hell, who was he
kidding. Well, she was no spring chicken either, and she was at least
interesting, what with that coffee cup trick. How did she do that? So he
showered, dabbed on some cologne that an aunt that given him a couple of
Christmases ago, shaved, because you never know, and put on a decent shirt, a
pair of grey flannels that he'd once thought was a bit racy, and a houndstooth
tweed jacket. Then he spent five minutes wondering what the devil he thought
he was doing. Then he thought, "well, worst case is I go out for a decent
meal".

Ding Dong! It was seven, that must be her. He was quite a bit excited as he
went to answer the door. The last time he'd done something like this was so
long ago, he didn't even remember the steps of the dance that teenagers do
when they meet and flirt and, and, and so on. Would she be wearing evening
dress? Something glamourous? Or just casual? Would she be beautiful? Or what?
He let his imagination run wild for a moment, she was a gorgeous sexy young
bimbo, and ... he opened the door; she was wearing a coat and hat. She looked
like a plain, ordinary middle-aged woman, just like she had at the Toledo.
Funny the tricks your mind can play on you.

"Hi, Duncan" she said, and smiled. He smiled back, and looked at his watch.
"Bang on time, then" he said. "Of course, what else?" she replied. "Yeh, well"
he said. She smiled again. Nice smile, he thought. She kind of lights up when
she smiles, like someone switched the electricity on. Makes you want to make
her smile more. He tried to think of something to say. "Like your hat", he
said. "Oh, do you? I wasn't sure, I think it's a bit, you know? Old
fashioned?" "No, it suits you." Aaargghhh. Open mouth, insert foot. "I mean,
even though it's old fashioned, it still looks nice on you. Come on in, let me
take your coat." Good recovery there, he thought.

She stepped inside, and gave him her hat and coat. Underneath, she was wearing
a black mid-calf skirt and a matching jacket on top of a light sweater. He
could see that she wasn't exactly slim, but he wasn't too lithesome himself.
You tend to get a bit tubby as you get older, he thought. "Coffee?" he
offered. "Mm, yes, thanks" she said. "Ah, I've booked a table at the Star of
India" he said. "They do decent curries, and I go there quite often. Nice
atmosphere, too." "Sounds great", she said. He called out from the kitchen.
"Er." Then he came into the dining room. "I don't know your name." "I don't
have a name." "Well, what do I call you?" "We did this in the Toledo,
remember?" He remembered. This is crazy. "Do you take sugar?" he asked. She
thought about that. "Just the one, please." "How can you not have a name,
everyone has a name." "Please, I have to do this in the right order." He
sighed, and brought her coffee out on a tray, with the small jug of milk and
the sugar bowl. She was sitting on the big easy chair, but sitting in the way
that women sometimes do, her legs tucked up on the chair underneath her.

"Can you do that trick again, with the coffee? I'll be watching more carefully
now." "OK," she said. She touched the base of the coffee mug with her index
finger. Then as she lifted the finger up, the mug came with it. She rotated
her hand, and the mug turned upside down. Again, the coffee didn't spill out.
"I really can't see how you do that" he said. She smiled, and reached out with
her other hand for the teaspoon, took a spoonful of sugar, and dropped it into
the mug. Dropped it upwards. Then she stirred the coffee in the inverted mug.
He tore his gaze off the mug to look at her face, she was smiling that smile
again.

She rotated her hand so that the mug was rightside up again, took the handle
in her other hand and drank some coffee. "Nice blend," she said. He scratched
his head. "You're a member of the Magic Circle, right?" She shook her head.
"You're a hypnotist, I didn't really see what I thought I saw?" "No, you saw
it." "Then what?" She looked thoughtful. "I was going to wait until after
we've eaten, but now's as good a time as any. And it means we can talk a bit
over dinner." She rose up off the chair.

His mouth fell open. She hadn't stood up, she'd just risen several inches. Her
legs were still tucked under her in a seated position, but now she was sitting
on nothing. On thin air. "What? What?" he said. She slowly rotated in midair
until she was upside down, and facing him. "It isn't just for coffee, Duncan."
"But. But." "I told you, I have to go at this slowly, otherwise you're going
to just switch off and stop listening. Things are not what they seem to be."
"That's for sure. So what is what?" She rotated back to the upright position
and stretched out her legs till her feet were back on the ground. "Drink your
coffee, Duncan." He shook his head. "Do I have to stop believing my eyes?" he
thought. "If I can't believe what my eyes tell me, then I can't do anything. I
have to assume that what I thought I saw was what really happened, and that
means that a lot of things I thought were true, aren't. And ..." He finished
his coffee and stood up. "Are you going to tell me what this is about?"
"Slowly, Duncan, please don't try to rush me on this. Let's go and see what
the Star of India has to offer." "Good idea," he said. He helped her to put
her coat back on, put on a heavy outer jacket, and opened the door. "This
way," he said, offering her his arm. She accepted it, and they walked down the
road.

The Weapon - Genesis - part 2
By Diana the Valkyrie
Ahriman and Mazda


Over their curries, Duncan asked her again. "What is it, how did you do that?"
"Later, Duncan. Can we talk about World War Two for a bit?" "Huh?"
"Specifically, the second half of 1941. The main antagonists then were Germany
and Russia. Hitler and Stalin. Which of them was good and which was bad?"
"Well, they were both a bad lot. Probably Hitler was worse, and we were at war
with Germany at the time." "OK, so we can agree that the Hitlerites were bad.
What about the Stalin lot?" "They were pretty awful too. Maybe a bit less bad.
Not really that much to choose between them, if you know what had been
happening in Russia in the 1930s" "So, given the choice between fighting on
Germany's side, Russia's side, or being neutral, which would you choose?"
"Neutral, I think. But that wasn't an option. We were already at war." "But
consider Sweden, or Switzerland." "They were two relatively small countries,
no big army. If they'd gone either way, they'd have stood a good chance of
being flattened." "So they were right to stay neutral?" "Well, from their
point of view, I think so. But not from the point of view of the Axis or the
Allies." "OK, so they want to stay neutral. How do they achieve that?" Duncan
thought a bit. "Well, consider Switzerland. Not much natural resources,
mountainous country, invading would be difficult and a bit bloody, and you
wind up with a bunch of cuckoo clocks. It just isn't worth it." She nodded.
"But what if Switzerland had no army at all, no means of defence?" "Then
they'd have been invaded by Germany, I guess, if it's easy then you might as
well take them out." "Yes," she said, "that's my feeling too. If it hadn't
been for the Swiss Army, even though it was small, they would probably have
been invaded despite claiming neutrality. That's what happened to Holland,
remember. And Belgium. Shall we go back to your place now?" "Sure," he said,
"Another coffee?" She nodded. "Yes, but I'm not going to do the inverted mug
again." "No," he said, "that levitation trick makes the coffee mug one look
like kids stuff." "I've got things that make that levitation trick look like
kids stuff, Duncan."

Back at his house, he put the kettle on and made them both another coffee, and
he set out some biscuits. She was sitting quite normally on the couch when he
took the tray in and laid it down. "Are you going to do some more magic?" he
asked. "No," she said, "more history." "World War Two?" "No, current history.
There's a war going on, Duncan." "Probably more than one." "A big one. Very
big. But you haven't heard about it." "A secret war?" "No, not secret. It just
hasn't reached here yet." "Between who?" "You could call them the blacks and
the whites. Or Ahriman and Mazda. Or God and Satan. It doesn't really matter -
there's two sides, and they're each a nasty piece of work. Both think they're
"good" and the other one is "evil". Both looking to sign up more allies to the
"Cause". Not too bothered about collateral damage. Think that it's worth any
sacrifice to win, especially if the sacrifice is someone else." "Aren't a lot
of wars like that?" She nodded. "Yes. Not all. But yes, there's a lot of
people like that. Anyway. You probably want to stay neutral in this. Like
Switzerland." "Sounds good to me." "Trouble is, you don't have anything like
the Swiss Army. You just don't have the weaponry to make invasion any sort of
problem, you'll just get trodden on." "We've got ships, planes. We've got
nukes. We can give anyone a bloody nose." She stood up, and beckoned him to
follow.

The evening was a bit chilly as they stood outside in his front garden. "Look
up there, Duncan." He looked up, the stars glittering brightly. "Duncan, you
don't stand a chance. They can orbit a million miles away and drop rocks on
you until they've killed enough of you for you to surrender. You don't have
anything you can fight back with. You'll fight civil wars between the ones who
want to surrender and the ones who want to try to fight on, somehow. But you
don't have the weapons to fight with, the result is either total surrender or
total genocide, and as far as I can see, it could go either way." He turned to
face her. "I'm not saying I believe all this, but if it's true, then we're
doomed, there's nothing we can do. You're right, no-one on this planet has a
weapon that can reach out a million miles into space and stand any chance of
doing any damage." She moved close to him, and turned her face up towards his,
and whispered softly. "Yes, you do. You do now. I'm the weapon, Duncan." She
put her arms round him, he pulled her towards him, and they kissed.

Back inside, she sat on the floor, hugging her knees. "Well," he said, "that
was nice. But ..." "I know," she replied. "It's rather a lot to ask you to
believe. But actually, you don't need to believe all that. Take it one step at
a time, and just suspend judgement on the tough stuff. You only need to decide
whether you believe or not, when you have some actual decision to make. Until
then, you can treat it as a nice story. "OK," he said, "that sounds fair
enough. How about you come sit on the couch with me here and tell me some more
stories?" She laughed, changed to a crossed-legs position and rose up from the
floor without using her legs. After a few seconds, she settled down on the
couch next to him. He turned to her, but she fended him off. "First decision,
Duncan." "I knew it. Too good to be true. What to I have to do, kill a
dragon?" "No, it's a lot simpler than that. See, I only arrived here today,
I've got nowhere to stay. Could I stay here overnight?" "Er." "I don't need a
bed or anything, I'll be all right just here." He thought about offering to
share his own bed; then he thought, well, maybe that's going a bit too fast. A
kiss is just a kiss. "Arrived from where?" She looked up at the ceiling, then
back down at him. "From there." "Yes, but where's there?" he persisted. "You
don't have a name for it, Duncan." "I don't have a name for you, either." "I
don't have a name." "Everyone has a name." "I'm not anyone." "Yes you are."
"No, Duncan, I'm not anyone. I'm a weapon."

"You said that before, what do you mean?" "Like the Swiss Army. I'm what makes
it not worth while to add this planet to either of the empires." "Empires?"
"Federations, unions, alliances. Empires. Ahriman or Mazda, whichever. I make
it more trouble than it's worth." "How?" She sat and thought. "Can we defer
that one, too? I really don't want to hit you with too much at once, and we
don't need that part just yet. You've seen one of the things I can do, just
assume that there's others, and we can get into details later. But I got here
only today, I don't have a base, can I stay here?" "Where's your luggage?" She
shook her head. "Got none." "No money either, I suppose?" She raised one of
her eyebrows. "No, I guess not. The intergalactic travellers Bureau de Change
hasn't been set up yet," he joked. "Look here," she said, showing her empty
hands. "This is all I've got, just me, myself and I." "Of course you're
welcome to stay here. Is there anything you need? There's towels in the
bathroom. You have a toothbrush?" She shook her head. "I've got a spare."

"Duncan?" "Yes?" "Thank you. You're taking a lot on trust here." "Well, you
know. You look mostly harmless." "Camouflage. I'm a lot more dangerous than I
look." "Show me." "What?" He moved towards her on the couch. "Show me." "Oh, I
see what you mean." She moved towards him, and they kissed again, this time
for a lot longer than before. His tongue suddenly felt hers, softly offering a
promise for the future, or at least a possibility. His arms were around her
body, her hands were on his shoulder blades, rubbing gently, his hands moved
to her waist, she moved closer towards him.

The kiss ended when she pulled back. "Oh," she said. "Mmm," replied Duncan.
"So, here?" she asked. He thought about that, and decided she wasn't asking
what he was hoping she was asking. "If you like, you can use my spare
bedroom." "OK, sounds great, thanks."

That night, Duncan had trouble getting to sleep. First of all, there were so
many mysteries that he couldn't even start to unravel them. Then there was the
sexy lady in the next room, a lady without a name, who thought she was a
weapon. Eventually, he decided that she was just playing some sort of game
with him, but it seemed like a nice enough sort of game, and he'd go along
with it. Dunno about the coffee mug trick, though. Or the floating through the
air.

* * *

Next day, he woke to the smell of frying bacon. He put on his dressing gown,
and went downstairs. "Hi," she said. "I thought I'd make myself useful." She'd
set out the breakfast table, there was coffee in the pot and cereal in a bowl.
"Thanks," he said, and dug in. She put a plate of bacon and eggs in front of
him. "I shouldn't really," he said, thinking about his waistline and picking
up a knife and fork. "So what do you plan to do while I'm at work?" he asked.
"Work," she said, "oh yes. Is it OK if I wait for you here? Maybe I could do a
bit of dusting and stuff while I'm waiting? When you get back, we can talk
some more, I've got lots more to tell you." "A name would be nice. Look, if
you don't have a name, how about I pick a name for you?" "No thank you. I'm
perfectly fine without one."

He got to the office, and sat through two meetings, drew up some presentation
charts, make some phone calls. Time went by at its usual rate, sixty minutes
to each hour, sixty seconds to each minute. Another day, another duty done. He
caught the bus for home, wondering what would be there to greet him, exactly.
During the day, he'd gone from thinking that she was a "con artist" to
"nymphomaniac", from "eccentric" to "complete nutter". And not having a name
to label her with was driving him barmy. "She" or "Her" just isn't good
enough.

* * *

The Weapon - Genesis - part 3
By Diana the Valkyrie
First flight


"Honey, I'm home," he called. "Dining room," she replied. He went in, she was
sitting at the table, looking up at him. "Have a good day, honey?" she asked.
"Yeah, honey, not bad. So what's for supper?" "Tongue." "Tongue?" "Yes, it's
already in your mouth" "Yeh, OK. I could go get some Pizza?" "Not just yet.
There's some stuff I want to do while it's still light." "Like what?" "I need
to show you some more stuff, then I can explain a bit more." "OK, I'm game,
what have you got to show me?"

She took his hand, and led him outside into the back garden. Once outside, she
spun and faced him, putting her other hand round his waist. She looked up into
his eyes, and said "We're going to fly." "We?" "You and me. Both of us."
"How?" "I'll explain how later. Right now, I just wanted to warn you that
takeoff is imminent. Three ... two ... one ..." and the two of them rose a few
inches into the air. He looked down.

"Well, I have to admit I'm impressed, but this isn't exactly setting an
altitude record." "I wanted you to get used to the idea first. Going up ... "
and they rose a few inches more. "You OK, Duncan?" "Yeh, fine, fine." "OK,
let's go, then" and they rose a couple of hundred feet. Duncan screamed, and
tried to break her hold. "Duncan, calm down. And don't try to push me away,
it's a long way down." He screamed again, and kicked. "Duncan, stop fighting
me. OK, going down ..." and they returned to the ground. She let go of him,
and he fell to his hands and knees. She hunkered down next to him, and stroked
his hair. "Sorry, honey, I didn't mean to scare you like that. It's perfectly
safe, really it is. In fact, you were probably safer right then than you've
even been in your life." He looked up at her. "It didn't feel safe. You know?
I don't think I've got any abnormal fear of heights, but when you're a couple
of hundred feet up and nothing is keeping you up, it's, well, scary." "But
something was keeping you up." "I suppose." "It's just a question of getting
used to it. Look, let's try again, only this time I won't go so high, OK?" He
swallowed. "OK" he nodded.

This time, they rose just a few feet, and hovered there. He looked down, but
it wasn't too far, he was OK. "Hold on tight to me if you like," she said,
"you'll feel safer that way." "Yeh, I'm OK now," he replied. "You ready for a
bit more?" "Go for it." They rose a couple more feet. "Still OK?" "Look, what
it is, is suppose I can't hang on, and I just fall?" "Won't happen." "But
suppose it did?" "Won't happen," she repeated, "you just have to trust me on
this." "But suppose I lose my grip, it can be a long way down." "Actually,
your grip doesn't matter, that's only to make you feel safer. I've got you,
you can't fall. Really." "OK, maybe a bit more." They rose a few more feet,
now hovering a dozen feet off the ground. "Still OK?" "Er, just about." "OK,
let's travel ..."

They moved horizontally; slowly at first. "You still OK, Duncan?" "Um." She
increased the speed to about 20 mph, and they could feel the wind as they
flew. "Wow," he said. She took him round in a wide circle, flying over several
neighbours fences, across the road, through a park, back across the road, then
landed back at the house. "I'll put the kettle on," she said, walking inside.
He followed her. "Wow."

"Duncan, we need to talk some more." "Wow." "Sit down, listen." "How do you do
that?" "There's loads more I can do, Duncan, but not right now. We need to
talk about the future a bit." "What about?" "Me. And you. Duncan, I'm a
weapon, but I need more." "What?" "Think of a sword, someone has to hack and
fence with it. Think of a gun, someone has to pull the trigger. A weapon needs
a wielder. That's what I need. I'm the Weapon, I need someone to be my
Wielder. And you're my first choice."

"Why me? I'm just nothing, why me?" "Because you're not a failure, but not a
success. Not a saint, but not a sinner. Not some young kid full of ego and
destruction, not some old guy tired of living. You're one of the people who
just want to be left alone to get on with your life. You don't want to conquer
the world, you don't want to hide under a stone. You're anyone, everyone,
everyman, Mr Ordinary. I want you to be my Wielder."

He coughed. "What do I have to do, what's involved?" "Same as with any weapon,
Duncan. You have to learn what I can do and what I can't do, you have to learn
how to aim me, and how to trigger me." "Trigger? What, you blow up or
something?" "If necessary, yes. Sort of. Details later, please? Not everything
at once?" "OK, so with a weapon like you, we can try to stay neutral in this
Mazda/Ahriman bunfight? Make it not worth the while of either side to annex
us?" "Right." "So which side are you on?"

"Neither. Obviously." "So there's actually three sides?" "Well, no. Or maybe
yes." "Thanks for the precise answer. And you're one of the people from the
third side?" "No. First of all, I'm not a person. Let me try to explain about
that. I came out a couple of days ago ... " "Came out?" She sighed, and
knuckled her eyes. "Duncan, order the pizza, and I'll tell you another story,
OK?"

He came back from ordering supper, and she was sitting on the couch. He joined
her there, and she scooted up close to him. "Kiss?" He kissed her, she
returned the kiss enthusiastically. "Hold me, Duncan." He hugged her, hard.
Her hair tickled his face; her face was close to his chest. "A couple of
billion years ago, a bunch of amino acids got together and make a
self-replicating thing. A thing that could make copies of itself. Some of the
copies weren't exactly right. Some of those were better at copying than the
originals, others were worse. The better ones made more copies, and the
process continued. It's called "evolution" and that's how come you're sitting
on this couch waiting for a pizza delivery." "OK, I knew all that already.
Where do you come into this?"

"In a moment. This self-replicating trick isn't actually that big a deal.
It'll happen anywhere that there's the possibility of it happening, sooner or
later. And once the self-replication thing happens, evolution is inevitable.
You almost always wind up with intelligent life, because intelligence is the
biggest advantage the self-replicator can have. So that's why there's so many
planets with life, that's where the Ahriman Empire and Mazda Empire came
from." "So what's the fight about?" "What was the Hitler/Stalin fight about?"
"Ultimately, I guess it was about territory." "Right, same here. They talk
about ideology, about right and wrong, good and evil, but actually it's about
territory. Which is why they'll each want this planet, when they get around to
it." "So that's where you came from?" "No. There's a whole different ball
game. Listen." "Kiss?" "Mmm." "Mmm, OK." "Now, listen."

"Several billion years ago, there was an explosion, you call it the "Big
Bang". All the matter in the universe expanded from one small area." "How did
it get there?" "Defer that one till later, Duncan" "OK." "But it wasn't like a
sponge cake, all even and fluffy. It was more like a plum pudding, with thin
areas, and thick areas, and clots. Plums. And small plums. Also sultanas and
currants." "The Fruitcake theory of cosmology?" "Yeah, right, good one. But
it's a good analogy." "The clots are the stars?" "No, they came later, when
things started to condense a bit. No - the clots were black holes. You know
what a black hole is?" "Yes, but I'm not really sure that I know what you mean
by that."

"If you have a lump of stuff that's very compressed, so that the escape
velocity is greater than the speed of light, then because nothing can travel
that fast, nothing can get out. Things can fall in, and when they do, they
generate a *lot* of energy in falling, but nothing can ever get out. It's
almost like a crinkle in the universe. So, in the very early stages of the Big
Bang, there were black holes formed of all sizes, plums, sultanas and
currants. And since then, other black holes have formed. If the sun were to
collapse until it was only a couple of miles across, then it would be a black
hole. But the important black holes, are the mini-holes, with only a million
tons of mass, plus or minus a couple of orders of magnitude." "Why are they
important?"

"They've been around for a couple of dozen billion years. Lots of mini-holes,
and lots of time. Some are positively charged, some negative. They have
angular momentum; some have spin up, some have spin down. Four possibilities.
Put them together, and you don't have a gravitational monopole like a star or
a planet, you have a quadrupole, with far more complex field possibilities,
the field of interactions between the four mini-holes And over time,
near-collisions have produced quadrupoles. But once you have a quadrupole, it
will attract other monopoles. Until there's eight mini-holes. Then it becomes
unstable, and fissions into two quadrupoles. You see where this is going?"
"Self-replication!" "Right. And self replication means ... ?" "Evolution."
"And evolution leads to ...?" "Intelligence?" "Right." Duncan looked at her.
"What does this have to do with you? You're not four black holes." "No? The
population of what you might call "Black Hole Folk" is pretty small, nothing
like the population of even a small planet. And they don't have much to do
with people like you, for obvious reasons. Not much in common, really. Or with
the Ahrimans or Mazdas. But they see what's happening, they see the war
spreading like a cancer, and they feel ethically obliged to help. But also
ethically obliged not to interfere. It's a dilemma."

"So how did they resolve the dilemma?" "Well, of course, there is no really
good resolution, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. So
what they did was a compromise. They built a weapon, so that the civilisations
not involved can try to keep neutral while the two empires at war destroy each
other. But they can't use the weapon, because that's direct interference, and
you just wind up with a third empire. So they give the weapon to someone on
the neutral planet, one of the natives has to wield it. One of the natives has
to make all the important decisions about using the weapon." "And you're the
weapon." "Yes, and you're the Wielder. If you'll accept me"

"You don't look like a weapon." "I bet a pistol doesn't look like a weapon to
a Roman legionnaire." "Fair enough." "Duncan, just believe me for now. I'm the
most dangerous weapon ever made." "Give us a kiss, then" "Mmm." "Mmmmm." He
pushed her down on the couch, and wrestled her underneath him. His tongue
found hers, her arms around his neck, his arms on her shoulders. "Some weapon
you are. I can pin you, easy." "Can you?" she asked, as her body floated
upwards with his still on top. "Can you?" she repeated, as she rotated them so
that he was now underneath and in danger of being dropped on the couch. "Maybe
not," he admitted, and they kissed again. She lowered them back to the couch,
now with her on top, and her hands moved down to his back. The doorbell rang,
shattering the moment. "Damn."

He answered the door, and soon they were mouth-deep in pizza. "So," she said,
"will you?" "Will I what?" "Will you be my Wielder?" He thought about this.
"Do I have to decide now? Isn't this like the other stuff you were talking
about, no need to decide just yet?" "No, Duncan. Look. Either I'm talking a
load of bunk, or else I'm the weapon and I need a Wielder. If it's all bunk,
then it doesn't actually matter what you say, we get to play some games and
it's all good fun. If it isn't all bunk, then I need a decision now, because I
need a Wielder, I need someone to tell me what to do. And if that isn't you,
then I need to find someone else. I can't spend a month here while you
decide." "Why do you need someone to tell you what to do, you seem to me to be
pretty capable of deciding things for yourself." "That's part of the deal,
Duncan. If the Black Hole Folk just dropped weapons on all the neutral
planets, and let the weapons make the decisions, then you just have a third
empire, run by the weapons, as a proxy for the Black Hole Folk. But instead,
you natives have to make the decisions about who to fight and how, how far to
go and where, so there's no third empire, just a bunch of independent neutrals
who have the teeth and claws to make that neutrality stick. Like the Swiss
Army." "And you're the Swiss Army Knife." "Yes. Yes, I am, that's a very good
analogy. So. Will you?"

He thought about the two alternatives. Maybe it was all bunk, but if it was,
it wouldn't matter, so he assumed she was telling it like it is. A "yes" put
him in the hottest seat on the planet, probably dangerous, certainly exciting,
and with the capability of messing up worse than any human had the chance to
mess up before. On the other hand, a "no" would mean that she'd walk out of
his life, and find someone else to be her Wielder. And once you've tasted
chocolate, you want more. She was definitely chocolate. With a toffee centre.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He opened them again, she was still
sitting on the other side of the table, waiting for his answer. Waiting ...
and, he thought, hoping. He breathed out. "Yes." "Yayyy ..." she cried, and
she dived across the table at him. His chair went over backwards as her body
hit his, he flailed his arms and legs trying desperately to avoid the crashing
fall that he knew would smash his head against the hard wooden floor. But the
chair kept tilting, he was going over, and then he landed. But she was
underneath him, cushioning the impact, the impact was his body on hers, and
instead of the blinding pain he was expecting, it was very nice. Very nice
indeed. "You didn't think I'd let you get hurt, did you?" she whispered in his
ear. "Shut up and kiss me" he said. So she did.

The Weapon - Genesis - part 4
By Diana the Valkyrie
A name for The Weapon


"I really need you to have a name, though." "Call me your Weapon." "You know
people even give names to guns, like Betsy, and Big Bertha?" "They do?" "Yes.
And look, suppose you're in another room or something, and I want to call to
you." "Weapon" "I say, Hey, Weapon?" "Why not?" "Well, it sounds wrong. I
mean, it isn't what I'd expect a name to be. It isn't a name, I mean, it isn't
a proper noun, it's a common noun." "So I can't use it?" "Well yes, you can,
but you also need a proper noun. Like Winona the Weapon" "Yuck" "OK, not
that." "And not Bertha. Or Betsy" "How about Wendy?" "Hmmm." "No, it's
perfect, you know? Wendy could fly, you see." "I thought humans couldn't fly?"
"She could. Wendy Darling." "Oh, from Peter Pan!" "Yes, that's right." She
thought for a moment. "I think Wendy is a lovely name. OK, I'm Wendy the
Weapon." "Um. OK. I might also call you Wendy Darling sometimes."

"Now we have to do the Rite of Binding," she said. "Sounds painful," he joked.
"Oh no, not at all. Just the opposite, in fact." "So what's the Rite of
Binding?" he asked. "It's the act that binds the Wielder to the Weapon. Think
of it as like King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone." "I have to pull you out
of a rock?" "No, actually it's more the exact opposite of that." "What do you
mean?" "You don't pull me out of something, you push part of you into
something." "Something?" "Me." "Oh." She smiled, and kissed him again. "And
you're Excalibur?" "No, I told you, I don't have a name. Stop trying to give
me one, I won't accept a name. But you can call me Wendy." "So you do have a
name!" "No, I don't. I don't have a name, even if you call me Wendy." "Ah.
Haddocks Eyes."

"This Rite of Binding, do we, by any chance, need to go upstairs to the
bedroom to do it?" he asked. "Oh no." He looked disappointed. "But that's
certainly a very traditional place to start it." She stood up. "Come on, let's
get weaving."

He followed her up to the main bedroom. "So," he said. "So." He sat on the
bed, and looked up at her. "So." She sat down next to him. "So." "Um." She
sidled up closer to him, and put her hand on his knee. He turned towards her,
and pushed he down on the bed, and started to kiss her. She responded
enthusiastically, closing her eyes and pushing her tongue into his mouth. He
brought his hand up to her waist, and started to pull her sweater up. She
broke the kiss, and said "No, wait. Look." She stood up, and twirled around,
her hair flying out as she spun. And her clothes disappeared.

"What?" he said. "How did you do that?" "Like it?" she asked. "Mmm, yes. Very
nice. But how ...?" She lay down next to him on the bed. "This is not the time
for explanations, Duncan. This is the time for Binding." "You know, you're
very good-looking. I had you pegged as a tubby middle-ager like me. But, well,
now I can see you naked, you look a lot younger than I thought. How old are
you?" "Two" "Two what, decades?" "Two days." "You're two days old?" "Right."
"Never!" "Duncan, I already told you. I'm not one of you folks, I'm ...
something else." "What?" "Please, Duncan? You want a lecture on theoretical
physics or you want to kiss me?" "Mmmm." "Mmmm."

They rolled around on the bed, wrestling until he got her pinned down with his
weight, and he kissed her while he reached towards her well-developed breasts.
The kiss went on until he started to feel both dizzy and aroused; then he
realised that somehow she'd gotten back on top of him, and she was pulling his
shirt off. She sat on his waist, and stroked the soft fur of his chest while
his hands explored her hardening nipples. Then she about-faced and tugged off
his trousers while his hands explored the contours of her back. She lay at
full length on him to get his shoes and socks off, while he stroked her feet
and licked her toes. Then she swung her leg round so that she was facing him
again, and he rolled them so that he was on top again. "You want to be on
top?" she asked. "Isn't that the way?" said Duncan. "There's lots of ways to
Bind, Duncan. We'll try a few of them." "A few?" "There has to be three
Bindings in the Rite." "Three? I'm not sure ..." "Three, Duncan. Rule of
Three" "Yeh, well. I don't think I was up to that even when I was a teenager.
Us forty-somethings are lucky if we can do it once." "Three, Duncan, it has to
be three." "Look, er, Wendy, I don't really thing I'm going to be able to ..."
"Shhh, my Wielder. This is one of the first lessons that you must learn. A man
with a Weapon is more powerful than one without." "Of course." "You no longer
have just your own power, you have mine too." "Ah." "As it says in the oath."
"Oath?" "Later, my sweet. Now, give me your hand." He put his hand in hers,
and she led it down to the tops of her legs. "Feel what I have there?" "Um,
yes. Usual stuff, what?" "Can you feel my arousal?" He felt the slippery
wetness there, and his own arousal grew and hardened. He moved his fingers
around, feeling the warmth and wetness of her, and she arched her back in
response. "Now, my Wielder, now. Enter into me, like the Sword into the
Stone."

He pressed down and forward, and his firm manhood penetrated her soft wetness.
"Ahhhh... " she moaned. Her hands reached up and around his body to caress his
back, and urge him further into her. He needed little encouragement to plunge
himself as deeply into her as he could, then pull back for another stroke.
"Yes, yes" she gasped, and moved to make his strokes more penetrating and
potent. Their movements synchronised as two counterpoised pendulums in the
ancient rhythm of human love; then he began to gasp, her cries came louder and
louder as he rammed her down, she thrust back up, he was grunting loudly now,
and then as his release came like an electric shock, he shouted, she screamed,
their bodies convulsed as the discharge of the orgasm flowed through them.

And then they lay together quietly, her hand rubbing the small of his back,
his mouth in her hair, breathing hard to replenish the oxygen debt of the last
few minutes. "Wow," he said, "wow, that was something, that was really
something, you're really something, something else, wow, wow." "Mmmm," she
said, "hush now, relax. That was the first." "The first?" "The first of the
three," she replied. He was silent for a while. "Look, Wendy, I don't want to
disappoint you, but, well ..." "Hush, Duncan, I can do things that you didn't
expect, can't I." "Yes, but ... " "Trust me, my Wielder, only trust me for a
little while, breathe deep, let your blood cool, let the pounding of your
heart return to normal, then we'll see, then maybe you'll be surprised."

"Tell me about this two days old thing. I don't feel like I'm making love to
an underage human female!" "I'm not a person, I already told you that. I'm a
manufacture." "A what? You mean a robot?" "I don't think this language has a
good word for it." "A cyborg, an android, a machine?" "Those sound to me like
terms of abuse, there's some inbuilt assumption of inferiority there. I'm not
the result of two people mating, I was made, not born, manufactured, but I'm
not a lesser being for that" "In a factory, I suppose?" "Yes, that's right, a
factory is a good word for it. A factory a long long way away. Made by the
Black Hole Folk, assembled, programmed and delivered." "Programmed?" "One
thing at a time, my Wielder. I was completed two days ago and installed here;
that's when I contacted you to become your Weapon." "Assembled? Out of what?"
"My core is four black holes, two of each charge, two of each spin." "So
you're one of the Black Hole Folk?" "No. The Black Hole Folk reproduce by
including additional black holes, then they fission like an amoeba, into two
individuals. Each of those individuals has a copy of all the information that
the original has." "So memory is inherited?" "Memory and to a large degree
personality, the habits of how you do things, how you react, your preferences.
But that wouldn't be right here; if I were one of the Black Hole Folk then I'd
have my own prejudices, my own ideals. I'd be telling you what to do, and it
has to be the other way round, for the sake of your neutrality. So instead of
the usual reproductive process, I was manufactured without any inheritance."

"So, in essence, you're four black holes?" "Yes, but without the billions of
memories of the Black Hole Folk. I was like a clean sheet of paper." "But you
can walk, and talk, and read, and, and, well, do things. You're no newborn
baby!" "That's the programming. I have programmed-in capabilities; simple
stuff like walking and flying, talking and mathematics." "That's not all
simple stuff!" "It is compared to the complex stuff." "What's the complex
stuff?" "Ethics, morals, how to behave, the difficult choices where every
possible decision is wrong but you still have to pick one. Whether a baby is
more important than the mother, whether these six people should live or those
six. That sort of stuff, I can't do that. But you can. That's why I'm the
Weapon, and you're the Wielder." "Do you have a soul?" "I don't know. Do you?"
"I believe I do." "Then do you believe that I do?" "I don't know. You weren't
made by God." "Neither were you, actually. You were made by your parents,
right?" "Well, yes. But. But God was in there somewhere" "So, your making
process was different from mine. Why would that give you a soul but not me?
Why should God be in one process and not in another?" "But do you think you
have a soul?" "Duncan. I don't know. OK? There's a lot of humans don't know,
either. Would you like a coffee?"

"Coffee? No, not right now. I tell you what I would like, though." "Mmm."
"Mmmm." "Mmmmmm." "But you know, my lovely little Weapon, you can forget this
three stuff. I'm completely pooped." "Duncan, you really have to start
trusting me a bit. When I say I'm going to do something, then you should
assume that I'm going to do it." "Yes, but some things can't be done, some
things not even you can do, honey." "The Rite of Binding will teach you three
things. First it will teach you to trust me, second it will teach you that
your power is greater when you have a Weapon." "And third?" "That sometimes
it's better to shut up and do something than to talk about doing something."

She held his limp penis in one hand, and floated in mid-air above him. She
lowered herself slowly onto him. "That isn't going to work because ..."
"Because?" "Because I'm not, you know. Ready." "You're forgetting something
important here." "What?" "I'm not, you know. Human." She lowered herself
another inch, and he felt himself being sucked into her. Her warm wetness
surrounded him, enclosed him, drew him deeper into herself. "Oh!" he
exclaimed. "That's, that's..." "Mmm?" "Impossible." "Mmmm?" "Ahhhhh" "Mmm?"
"Yes!" He was fully inside her now, held stiffly inside by something that
continued to exert suction on his penis. "Ahhh." "Impossible, you said?" and
she squeezed him inside her. "Ahhhh." "Can't be done, eh?" and she released
him slightly, then sucked his penis back inside. "You're not, you aren't." "I
told you, my Wielder, I'm not human, I'm a manufacture, the assumptions you've
always made just aren't relevant for me. Mmm?" "Ahhh." She continued to work
him slowly in and out while her hands caressed his chest and belly like two
feathers, moving and touching, touching and moving, never staying still, under
his neck, into his armpits, all the soft secret places that need to be touched
and squeezed, her skill in this incomparably greater than anything he had
experienced before. "Oh, so good, so wonderful, please, yes, more, and there,
oh yes." She carefully built his passion higher and higher until he exploded
with orgasm inside her, his screaming so loud it would rival a steam whistle,
his orgasm the more intense because of her powerful control over her vagina
and his penis.

"Oh my god. Oh my god." "So, do you think I have a soul, Duncan?" He lay on
his side, his head buried between her soft breasts, his voice a bit muffled.
"You've got anything you want to have, you're the most wonderful weapon a man
could hope for." She stroked his hair and hummed. Suddenly he raised his head
and looked up at her. "Your heart!" "Yes?" "It isn't, I mean, I can't feel.
Oh. Do you, is there ...?" "I don't have a heart, my love. I don't have a lot
of things that you might have expected." "But if you don't have a heart, how
can you feel ..." "I don't have a heart because your heart is for pumping
blood round your body, and I don't have any blood, so I don't really need a
heart, do I? You don't actually feel emotions with your heart, you know,
that's just the way people talk. Some civilisations thought the liver, some
thought the kidneys. It's actually part of your brain that does that. And I do
have a brain, even if it isn't the same hardware as yours, so yes, I can feel
love." "Oh, and do you?" "Duncan, that isn't the way a man speaks to a woman,
is it?"

"No, no, I'm sorry, of course. Well. I think I'm in love with you. Is it OK
for a Wielder to be in love with his Weapon, or is that against all the
rules?" "Is it OK? It's compulsory. And vice versa, of course." "Vice versa?"
"I think I'm in love with you too." "You think?" "It's too soon to be
definite." "Too soon?" "We're only two parts into the Rite of Binding, my
love. Wait till after the third." "The third." "Yes." "OK, I believe you.
You're going to do that to me again." "Not quite." "No?" "No, the third time
is different. Very much so, because at the end of the third, we're bound
together, a Wielder and his Weapon, and we make the Oath to each other."
"Oath?" "The oath of the Weapon and her Wielder." "I don't know the oath, what
do I say." "When the time comes, you'll know." "But ..." "Trust me ..." "You
know, if there's one thing I'm beginning to learn, its that when you tell me
to trust you then I should." "Good. Later on, you'll learn to trust me even
when I don't tell you to." "Mmm."

"Wendy, how did you make your clothes disappear like that?" "Let me explain a
bit more about my construction." "But your clothes ... " "Trust ..." "OK, OK,"
he grinned. "A black hole has a fierce gravitational gradient. If you got
close to a black hole, the tidal forces would tear you apart, because the
gravity is so much greater if you're just slightly nearer. So, the part of you
that was a few inches closer to the black hole is pulled away from the part of
you that is a few inches further. That's the same effect that causes tides in
the planet's oceans, but much much greater. So I have to shield everything
around me from the fierce intensity of my gravitational fields. You *really*
don't want to get too close to me, say a fraction of a millimeter from the
black holes, and if I didn't put up a shield, then things would get close. But
because I'm a quadrupole, I can do that, I can create shielding fields that
make the raw intensity internal. Externally, you don't feel my gravitation."
"I can feel some of it," he said, as he nuzzled the side of her neck. "Mmmmm.
Well, that's a completely different sort of attraction, Duncan. So, around the
quadrupole, I have the first shield, the one that filters out the direct
gravitational effects. But if you got too close to that shield, you'd feel the
self-gravity of that gravitational tensor, the field of force. So, around the
first shield, I have a second shield, and that's what gives me the shape and
size that you can see." "You can control that?" "Yes, it's pretty much the
same as the way you can control the direction you're looking, or the bend of
your elbow. That shield is pretty hard and tough, but it can be damaged.
Although if it is, I can just close it down and recreate it. Then there's a
third layer on top of that, that's what you think is my skin." "Soft," he
said, stroking her thigh. "Yes, soft, and easily damaged, just like yours. But
the second layer is very tough, and the first, well, I don't think there's
anything that can damage that." "Wow. So you're invulnerable!" "No, I wouldn't
say that. You can cut my skin as easily as yours. The big differences are that
I won't bleed, because I don't have blood. And a knife blade would be stopped
by the second layer. And then I'd fix up the third in a moment, good as new."
"Wow." "And the clothes, well, that's very simple. You've probably worked that
out by now." He thought. "No, I haven't, actually, wait a minute, let me
think." Her hand crept between his legs. "How am I supposed to think when
you're doing that?" "Are you commanding me to stop?" "Commanding?" "I'm your
weapon, are you commanding me to stop doing this? And this? And this?" "Er,
no, no. You carry on." "And this."

"Wait, I know. I was looking at it wrong. They weren't clothes, right?"
"Right" "A fourth layer?" "Right." "But they looked so, so real. Like wool and
silk, they were just a field?" "Everything is, really. Matter is just frozen
energy, atoms are 99.99% empty space, fibres are just long chain molecules,
the atoms held together with the electroweak force. Look at my skin, look
carefully." "Looks normal to me." "Right. You can see the hair follicles." "I
can see the veins, I thought you didn't do blood?" "I don't, it's just
colouring and a slightly uneven surface." "Well, I suppose if you can make all
that look so good, fabrics must be a piece of cake." "Easy enough, you don't
even have to be exact about it, people expect some unevenness." "But you're
really beautiful. I can't believe I thought you were forty-five." "Is that
what you thought?" "When we first met, yes." "That's because that's the look I
was aiming for, Duncan. I didn't want to intimidate you, I wanted you to feel
comfortable with my looks. I can be pretty damn intimidating if I want to,
believe me. A twenty-something dolly-bird wouldn't have been right for you, so
I was a forty-something housefrau." "You don't look like a forty-something
housefrau now." "Why should I? I want you to find me sexually attractive, I
want you to be proud of me, and most of all, I want you to want me. Why should
a Weapon be ugly or even plain? Especially for the Rite of Binding, I want you
to be in a state of total blind lust." "Right now, I'm nearly in a state of
sleep." "Don't worry, I know how to fix that."

He felt her hand between his legs again, soft and gentle. He thought about
rotating charged magnetic black holes, fields of force and a two-day-old
machine. No, that wasn't right. His brain might have accepted that, but his
body knew that it was in the presence of the sexiest woman he'd ever met, and
she was in the process of initiating sex with him for the third time. Even
though he was exhausted, her touch began to stir him and his hands reached for
her breasts, feeling the hardness of her nipples and the firmness underneath.
His hands moved around and down until they were around her waist; her waist
was too big for him to enclose in his hands, but not by much. The feel of her
taut waist excited him more, and she rolled over so that he was on top of her
again. Then she rose. "This time, we fly," she whispered into his ear. He
looked down, nervously. "Trust your Weapon," she said, "I won't let you fall."
He looked into her eyes. "I'm learning," he said. Her hands moved up and down
his back, making electricity in his skin. He found himself being drawn into
her again, this time she didn't use her hands to guide him, it was like a
magnet attracting a rod of iron, although at the moment it didn't feel to him
like iron. But it did feel like he was enclosed in a vice made of silk and
velvet that was steadily drawing him in deeper and deeper, and when he was
fully engaged, he felt ripples of compression moving up and down. He groaned
as her body clutched at his, her legs wrapped around his thighs, her arms
round his neck, pulling him closer to her as her vagina sucked at his penis
with a strong milking action. "Ohhhhh..." he moaned, "oh, oh, oh."

"You like this?" she whispered. "Oh yes, yes." "You see, I'm not made the way
you expected, am I?" "No, no..." "This is better for you, isn't it?" "Yes,
yes" "OK, now close your eyes, I won't let you fall, I promise." He closed his
eyes, and she tightened her grip on him, her arms, her legs and her vagina all
pulling him close, hugging and squeezing. And she started them rotating, so
that she was on top, then he was, then she was, and as they rotated, the force
of gravity was acting on him. When she was on top, he moved down slightly, his
penis sliding out despite the strong grip of her vagina. Then as the rotation
brought him to the top, gravity pushed him down again, her vagina sucked and
drew him in. With each rotation, the sensations on his body built up and up,
and she gradually speeded up the rotation, so that the forces were acting
faster and faster. "Oh yes, oh yes," he cried, "oh please, oh, oh." "You see
the power of your Weapon now?" "Oh yes, yes" "You want more?" "Yes, yes, oh
please." She rotated them now at about one revolution per second, and he could
feel the pressure of his climax building up inside him until within a short
time, a white hot ball of flame erupted inside him, spreading out and around,
an explosion of sensation that rivalled the primordal Big Bang that kicked off
the universe. The powerful jolt to his nervous system interrupted his
autonomous processes, and his breathing was interrupted apart from the long
scream of "Yessssss!", and within a short time the consequential lack of
oxygen blacked out his brain, and he fell unconscious.

"Mmm," she said quietly, "nice." She put her mouth over his, and exhaled
oxygen into his lungs; when she stopped, he was breathing normally again. She
checked his pulse, it was 160, very high. His blood pressure was high too, but
not dangerously so. She lowered them both to the bed, and pulled his head to
her breasts, and whispered to him.

My strength is your strength. My power is your power. I will love you and
protect you and obey you. Until the end of time.

His eyes opened, and he looked into her eyes, and replied.

Your strength is my strength. Your power is my power. I will love you and
protect you and command you. Until the end of time.

And he relaxed, closed his eyes, and fell into an exhausted sleep.

The Weapon - Genesis - part 5
By Diana the Valkyrie
Flying lessons


Next day she woke him up. "Rise and shine, new day! Come on sleepyhead, it's
noon." "Guh" She kissed him. "Hey, come on, you want to sleep for ever?" She
chivied him into the shower, and rubbed him down with a towel, pushed him into
the bedroom to get dressed and skipped downstairs to get breakfast ready. He
was almost awake by the time he got to the table, and she gave him a cup of
coffee. "You're very chipper this morning," he said. "Yes, well. I got myself
a new Wielder" she replied, smiling. "I feel like I've been put in a tumble
drier," he said. "Actually, that's not far from what happened." "I'm bruised
all over," he complained. "Nonsense. I checked, it's just muscle soreness, you
haven't had a good workout for much too long. You'll be right as rain in a
couple of days. And a few weeks from now, you'll be able to handle it every
day without any difficulty." "Handle what?" "Me. Your Weapon." "What? We do
the Rite of Binding every day?" She chuckled. "Well, maybe not the full Rite.
But at least part of it, yes. Why, don't you like the idea?" He was fully
awake now. "Well. Yes. Of course. But. Look, I'm forty-seven, you'll kill me."
"Kill you with too much sex." "No. Yes. Hell, I don't know, you're the expert
in this." "No I'm not, I'm just the Weapon, you're the person who's supposed
to know what he's doing." "Look, this is just totally outside my experience, I
don't know why you think ... " "Well, don't look at me, I'm only two days old,
three days now, you think I have much experience?" "You know exactly what
you're doing, you minx. And is it my imagination, or are you taller than you
were before?" "I added a few inches, you like?" He looked her up and down. "I
like." He pulled her towards him. "Come sit on my lap."

She sat on his lap and put her arms round his neck, his head was buried in her
breasts. "And these have gotten bigger, too." "Uh huh." "And your hair is
longer, what's going on here?" "Well, like I said. I didn't want to intimidate
you before, but now we're, er, intimate, and I'm your Weapon, so I want to
look good for you. Plus it'll help if I can intimidate other people a little
bit, won't it?" "Yes, I guess. But I thought I was supposed to make these
sorts of decisions?" "No, you don't make all the decisions, honey. You decide
strategy, I do tactics. When the chips are down, I can't ask you every move I
make, can I?" "No, but what happened to I command and you obey?" "You decide
the strategy, you Wield the Weapon. You decide what I'm going to hit, I sort
out the nitty gritty of what angle and what speed and stuff like that. And I,
I obey, like I said, the oath means what it says." "And protect? You said
you're pretty much indestructible, nothing can damage you past the first
shield, how do I protect you?" "There's more than one kind of damage, my love.
Physical damage isn't a problem for me, but emotional - that's a whole
different ball game. See, you've got 47 years of emotional armour. I've got
three days. I haven't got your good judgement and experience of who to trust
and who not to, I'd just trust everyone. That's one of the reasons I need you,
I need someone to tell me what to do. Oh, my Wielder, I'll love you and
protect you and obey you and it'll be so good, so fine, so lovely." She kissed
him, and fed him some toast and marmite. "Flying practice today?" she asked.
He grimaced. "Or we could spend the whole day making love." He smiled. "That's
a very attractive proposition, Wendy, but I think you're right, we should go
out flying. It's a fine clear day, perfect for you to show me what you can do
and for me to get used to being flown around."

He put some marmalade on a slice of toast, and fed it to her. "You know, last
night, you were, well, I don't really have the words for it. But I'd guess
that no man has ever had an experience like that before. You were amazing."
"Thank you, just doing my job." "Your job?" She laughed. "Joking. I really
loved making it so good for you, really." "But I don't feel like I did much
for you." "Ah." "Ah?" "Um." "What do you mean, Ah, Um?" "Honey, I'm not a
person." "Yes, I think you proved that pretty conclusively last night, that
was not a human female anatomy. I mean, mostly it was, but there were a few,
er, extras." "Duncan, you know that love is in the mind, not in the heart?"
"Yes, of course" "And I'd guess it's no surprise to you to know that pleasure
is in the brain, not in the genitals?" "Well, I suppose so, but it certainly
feels like it comes from down there." "Well, I don't get any pleasure out of
sexual stimulation." "You don't?"

She shook her head. "But, but. You were faking it? I heard you saying yes and
ooh and stuff, so you must have been faking it? No!" "No, not like that. Wait
a minute, don't jump at me like that, calm down and listen. It's complicated."
"It always is with you." "It is with you too, but you're used to it so you
don't see the complexity. Wait a minute, let me think how to explain this."
"OK."

"Look, when you touch my nipple, you like it, right?" "Yes, of course." "But
the reason you like it isn't because of what you feel, it's because of what
you know I feel. You share the sensations with your sexual partner, you know
what response you're causing, and so you share that response." "OK" "Well,
it's the same for me, only more so. The whole thing that I feel, is what
you're feeling. I share all your sexual pleasure. When you feel pleasure at
touching me, I share that. When you feel pleasure from me touching you, I feel
that, even more. And when I bring you to a shattering, soul-wrenching
screaming orgasm, I feel that in spades. I share your love. I'm your Weapon,
you're my Wielder, and I share what you feel." "Telepathy?" "No, sympathy.
Like when you touch my nipple and feel pleasure from my response." "But you
don't feel ..." "I do, though, because I can feel your reaction to what you
think I'm feeling." "But. Wait. This is recursive." "No, it's love," she
smiled.

"Wow. That's, that's, um. No wonder you knew exactly what to do to me and how
much and stuff." "Mmm. I make a pretty good sexual weapon too, don't I?" "You
certainly do, come here so I can kiss you." "I'm already sitting on your mmmm
ummm."

After breakfast, and stuff, they walked out into the garden. "Flying lessons",
she said. "I don't get this. You already know how to fly, and you can teach me
until you're blue in the face, all I'm going to be able to do is fly straight
downwards until I hit the ground." "Yes, but I have to learn how to fly with
you, it's not the same as solo. And you have to learn how to fly with me, I
don't want you puking up all over me." "As if I would." "You nearly did
yesterday." "Oh. Yes. Well. I wasn't expecting it, you know? You caught me
off-guard." "Yeah, right," she laughed. "Duncan, there's a little monkey
inside of you that knows all about falling out of trees, and the monkey does
not like the sensation of weightlessness, or the feeling of having nothing to
hold on to." "I can hold on to you, though." "Sure, you can clutch on to me
like grim death, scared as hell and making me worry about you, or you can
learn how to fly." "I'll learn." "OK, hold on to me now." He put his arms
round her neck and held on tight, while she rose ten feet in the air.

"OK, this is high enough to start with. Sweetheart, I want you to let go of my
neck." "But I'll fall." "You think I'd let you get hurt? Love you and protect
you?" "Noooo. I guess. No, I don't guess, I know. OK then." He let go. "So
what's keeping me up?" "I am. You want to hold my hand?" "How will that help?"
"Actually, it won't, but I bet it makes you feel better about this." She took
his hand in hers. "How's that?" "I have to say, my stomach doesn't like this
at all." "It'll get used to it. Come on, let's move a bit." She flew forward
at walking speed, and he was still alongside of her. She speeded up to a trot,
and he was still by her side. They flew along for a minute or two, along the
road and into a park nearby; she turned to him and said "How's this?" "This is
OK." "Right, now lets go up a bit." She held on to his hand and they zoomed
upwards to treetop height, then they hovered in place. "See, it's not so bad,
is it?" "I felt better when I was closer to you." "Duncan, if I need to do
aerobatics, I can always hug you close to me, but I want your instincts to get
used to the idea that you don't need to hold on to anything. Because you
don't; as long as I'm with you, you can't fall." "I know, I know, now tell the
monkey inside me." "OK, let's give the monkey something to think about."

She held his hand and zoomed upwards, hovering just below the clouds. "It's a
long way down, isn't it?" "Mmm, a mile or so." She let go his hand, and he
started to fall. Slowly at first, but before a minute, his body had reached
the speed that a falling human reaches, when the force of gravity is matched
by the wind resistance, 125 knots. He was tumbling; rolling and twisting, and
he closed his eyes, not wanting to be sick. Suddenly he was caught and held by
a strong pair of hands that pulled him towards a delightfully soft but firm
body. "You didn't think I'd let you fall to the ground, did you?" "Not for a
moment, Wendy, but I was wondering just how long you'd let me drop." "I think
maybe you're starting to trust me." "It think so, but, uh ..." "Mmm?" "Can we
not do that again? Please?"

"Up, up, and away" she said, and zoomed up straight into the clouds. For some
seconds, they were flying blind, and he hoped there wasn't too much traffic in
these clouds. Then they broke through into bright sunshine, the clouds like a
fluffy white carpet below. "See, isn't that lovely?" He had to agree, the blue
sky above, the white clouds below, the brilliant sunshine. "Hey Duncan - wanna
fuck?" "What here?" "Sure here." "Isn't it a bit ... public?" "You mean,
because we can see and be seen for twenty miles around us?" "Er, yes?" "No,
it's perfectly private. If an airplane comes by, we'll hear it coming, and we
can duck down into the clouds." "Is this part of the Binding?" "Well, no. And
yes. This is because we like it, but I think each time we do it, that does
Bind us closer, don't you think?"

"I'm sure it does, but I really don't think I can keep up this pace. After
last night, I'm totally, well. Drained. I'm not exactly a teenager, you know.
I might be able to go another round this evening, but honestly, love, I
couldn't right now." "I bet you could if I did this." "Oh." "And that." "Oh,
oh." She pulled up her skirt, and tugged his trousers down. Her legs
surrounded his waist, her arms around his body. And her vagina drew his
stiffening penis inside, pulling and squeezing like she was a milking machine.
"You know, you're a very multifunctional Swiss Army Knife." "Yes, I am, aren't
I? But more like a kitchen Mixmaster, I think. Maybe you could call me a Sex
Machine." "Wow. So what have you got?" "Well, there's the juice squeezer, and
the garlic crusher." "Oh, oh." "And the vacuum attachment." "Ahhhhh." "And the
nutcracker." "Ouch! Oh. Oh wow. You know ... after you ... I'm never ... going
to ... have sex ... with a ... normal woman ... ever again? Aaaaaghhhhhh
....." "Shh, shh. quiet, you'll scare the birds." "What birds?" "Well, if
there were any."

Then she called out in a loud, clear voice "My strength is your strength. My
power is your power. I will love you and protect you and obey you. Until the
end of time."

"Your strength is my strength. Your power is my power. I will love you and
protect you and command you. Until the end of time."

She held him while the explosions of orgasm died down. "Better now?" she
asked. "Mmm, much. Just don't expect anything tonight." "Oh, I won't, I won't.
Anything that happens tonight will just be a bonus, yes?" "There won't be any
bonuses tonight, you wonderful sex machine, you." "Oh well," she said, "never
mind, we'll just have to see what happens. Deal with things as they come up.
If they come up. If you follow me. Now, I think we've done enough flying for
today, let's get back down and use our legs." "Speak for yourself, sex
machine, I don't think my legs are strong enough to support me right now." She
flew them back down to the park, and landed by a small stand of trees.


The Weapon - Genesis - part 6
By Diana the Valkyrie
The kitten



"What's that?" she asked.

"What's what?" "That. That noise?" "I can't hear anything." "Maybe my hearing
is better than yours, it's coming from over there, let's get a bit closer."
She flew them towards one of the trees, and then Duncan could hear the sound,
too. "Mew. mew." "Look, it's a kitten." "Stupid little thing, it got up and
now it can't get down." "Mew mew." "Look, how about you fly over to it and
rescue it?" "You command, I obey" "Hey, it's not that big a deal" "Yes, I
know, but still. It's scared, and I can help it." "Mew mew."

She landed to drop him off, and Duncan stood and watched while she rose back
up into the tree, next to the kitten. "Here, kitty kitty." The kitten
retreated, hissing at her. She reached out a hand. The kitten swiped, and sank
its claws into her skin. "Oh! Duncan, it scratched me. It doesn't want to be
rescued." He called up to her. "Yes it does, it's just scared. Talk to it."
"Hey, kitten, you silly little scrap, I'm here to help you, don't back away,
I'll get you down off this tree, look, here's my hand, it's a nice little
hand, it's here to help you, wouldn't you like me to stroke your fur a bit,
there, see, that's nice isn't it, look, you can trust me, I'm going to get you
down." "Grab the scruff of the neck, that's how mother cats carry their
kittens" She made a grab, the kitten dodged and hissed and spat, glaring
defiance at her. She grabbed again, and this time she got her hand on the
kitten, grabbing it by the neck like she'd just been told. The kitten
continued to fight back, scratching and trying to bite. "My, aren't we the
feisty one" she said, as she returned to ground level. "Look, Duncan, isn't
she lovely?" The kitten continued to struggle, but not so frantically now. She
cuddled it in her arms, and stroked it, and it responded by calming down and
beginning to purr. "Oh, Duncan, she's so sweet, can I keep her?" Duncan looked
around. "I don't know, how did she get up there, where did she come from?"
"Duncan, what difference how she got up there, she's down now, I can't just
leave her in the middle of the park, she'll starve to death, look, she's only
a little sooty black kitten, can I keep her, can I, can I?"

He looked at the kitten, and at her hand. "Where's the scratch you just got?"
"I mended it, Duncan, look, she's such a little bundle, she probably misses
her mother." She cuddled the kitten to her breasts like a little baby. "Mended
it?" "Yes, it's nothing, just a field of force, can we take her home? Please?"
She looked at him appealingly, her big blue eyes wide and hopeful. "Hey, wait.
You had brown eyes before." "I thought you might like these better." He
sighed. "You're impossible." "I know, but can I keep her? Please? Pretty
please?" He sighed again. "I can see how this goes. OK, look. You can keep
her, but she's the only one, you're not going to bring every stray dog and cat
into the house just because you rescued them, OK?" "OK." "Promise?" "Promise."
"OK. Then you can keep this one. But you house train it!" "Oh Duncan, you're a
brick, I love you." She held the kitten with one hand, and pulled him towards
her with the other, and they kissed. "Mew?"

"Lady lady." Someone was tugging at her skirt while they were kissing. "Lady."
She looked down, a small girl was standing there, looking up at her. "You
found Jimmy!" "Jimmy." "Jimmy, my kitten, you found him, thank you!" "Your
kitten?" The little girl reached out her arms. "Thank you!" She looked at the
kitten, she looked at the little girl. And then she looked at Duncan. "Duncan,
you said I could ..." He shook his head. "Duncan, you promised ... but I ... "
Duncan took the kitten from her and gave it to the little girl. "Oh, you bad
bad cat, no cream for you tonight, but you can have some milk and maybe a
little bread with it, and then it's straight to your basket because you made
us all so worried ... " The girl ran down the path with her kitten.

"Duncan?" He held out his hand. "Duncan, you promised." "Sweetheart, I ... "
"You told me we could keep her." She started to cry. "Oh, don't cry, love,
we'll get you a kitten." "I don't want another kitten. I wanted that one, she
was so lovely, so helpless" "He, his name was Jimmy." "That family is going to
have a big surprise the first time Jimmy gets pregnant. Oh, Duncan, she was so
sweet." He watched helplessly as the tears rolled down her cheeks. "Come here,
my big powerful indestructible Weapon." He pulled her to him and held her in
his arms. "You're invulnerable to kitten scratches, you could fly through the
middle of a thermonuclear explosion, but you cry over a kitten that was never
actually yours in the first place. Wendy, the kitten already had a home, that
little girl would have been crying if we hadn't given her back her little
Jimmy." "But you promised." "Yes, I did, but that was before I knew about the
little girl, when I thought the alternative was to abandon the kitten in the
park, and it wouldn't have lived for long, but new information can change
decisions, and you can stop crying because I hate to see you like this." She
sniffed. "Wendy, would you rather keep the kitten and think about that little
girl being unhappy about losing her kitten?" "No, of course not." "Right
then."

"The kitten will be alright with that girl?" "Yes, of course she will, you
heard how she was talking to it." "But she was going to punish it." "No cream
isn't that big a punishment, she'll survive that." "I suppose." "The kitten
will be fine. Look let's go home, I've got something that will make you feel
better." "What?" she sniffed again. "Grow up girl, what do you think?" "Oh.
Oh, OK." "Fly?" "I don't feel like flying," she replied, "I'm really kind of
down, you know?" he took her hand, and they walked through the park, hand in
hand, down the road and back to his house.

"Do the thing with your clothes again." "You mean this?" and she was naked.
"Yummy. Come here." He jumped at her, and threw her down on the bed. "Do you
really think you can toss me about like this?" she asked, "do you know what I
weigh?". "Yes, I do. Because you like it too, so you let me." "Well, there is
that." "And you weigh whatever you want to weigh, right?" "Yes, but my mass is
about a billion tons." He stared at her. "You might be a bit overweight for
your height, but I think you're as sexy as hell." "Oh, Duncan!" "Shut up, sex
machine, and show me your juice squeezer."

Afterwards, he stroked her hair. "You know your hair is the same colour as
that kitten?" She smiled, and purred. "Hey, you're purring." "Yes, and I can
scratch, too." She attacked him with her claws. "Scratch scratch scratch"
"You're blunt." "I wouldn't scratch you if I wasn't blunt." They rolled around
until he got on top of her. "A billion tons?" "Plus or minus, yes, why?" "A
bit big for a kitten." "I'm not a kitten, I'm a Weapon." "Yes, I know, and
you're the most dangerous weapon on the planet. But you know? You're just a
little kitten inside." "Better not tell the Ahrimans and the Mazdas that."
"No, to them you're the big bad dangerous Weapon, but to me, you're my little
kitten, and I love you and protect you and ... mmmm" "Mmmm".

"And I've been thinking, little kitten." "I'm not a kitten, I'm a Weapon."
"Yes, I know, but look, it's like a pet name, just between the two of us, soft
little kitten on the inside, Big Bad Weapon on the outside, no-one else has to
know. You know Winston Churchill?" "Heard of him, of course" "Well, he called
his wife "Mrs Pussycat, and she called him Mr Pug, it's the sort of thing that
lovers do. You're my little kitten." "And you're my big dog?" "If you want."
She thought about this. "OK then, bigdog."

"You know, rescuing kittens from trees is all very well, but I can't help
thinking that, well, I ought to be doing, you know. More? I mean, in between
saving the world from invasion, of course." "More? Like what?" "Well. Maybe
fighting crime like Batman?" "No, bad idea." "Why? I think I'd be rather good
at it." "Why?" "Well, I can fly. And stuff? No?" "Kitten, you think you'd be
good on corporate fraud?" "Well, maybe not that, but..." "How about mugging
old ladies?" "Well yes, that's me, for sure, I'd ..." "You'd what, exactly?
And where?" "Well, if they saw me, they'd think twice about ... " "Saw you
where? Thing is, you can't be everywhere. Even The Bat, he only operates in
one city. Plus, you don't know how to arrest someone in the kind of way that
is most likely to make a successful prosecution." "Well, all that court stuff
is silly anyway, if I catch someone red-handed, I could just, well. Well."
"Well what? You'd spank them?" "Well, I don't know. Why is it so complicated?"

"Because people are complicated. Look, I don't see you as some kind of Caped
Crusader. The main reason you're here is as a military weapon, not to deal
with half-pint hoodlums, or even kittens stuck up trees." "I'm not supposed to
rescue kittens?" "Well, sure you can, Wendy, but that's not exactly mainstream
world-saving, is it?" "I guess not. So what am I supposed to do, knit scarves
and socks while we wait to see that the Ahrimans and the Mazdas do?" "No, of
course not. That would be a terrible waste of your abilities. And anyway, if
you do use what you have, it'd be like training, so you'd be better able to
swing into battle when the action really does start." "I don't need training,
I already know how to do stuff." "Yes, but I do need training, I don't know
what you're capable of, or how best to Wield you." "So what do you think I
should do?" "Lets get a newspaper and go though it, see where you might be of
greatest benefit."

They got a newspaper and started leafing through it. Political scandals, royal
gossip, unrest in various parts of the world. A couple of terrorist incidents,
strikes, companies going out of business. Political demonstrations, fighting
between religious factions, floods damaging crops. "It's all so, so." "Small,"
he said. "Yes. There's nothing here I can help with, is there?" "Not really.
It's tough to stop people from fighting if they want to fight, you can't stop
politicians sleeping with each other's wives, and the crops are already
damaged by the flood. Tell you what, though. It shows us one thing." "What's
that?" "If there's not much in the world that a Weapon like you can do for
good, then that means you have to move fast." "Why?" "Because when something
does happen, you'll want to be there as soon as possible." "OK, makes sense."
"So how fast can you go?" "Go where?" "Well, say it was right round the other
side of the world?" "If I took the short cut? A few minutes." "Never!" "Sure."
"What's this short cut?" She pointed down. "Straight through. I drop all the
shields, I'm just four black holes, I cut through the planet like a bullet
through butter."

"Wow. Bit impractical, though, isn't it?" "Why? When I arrive, I remake the
shields, all good as new, shipshape and ready for action." "Yes, but isn't
that going to mess the planet up a bit?" She thought. "No, I don't think so. A
billion ton black hole is pretty small, you know." "Yes, but even so, we'd
wind up with a planet like Swiss cheese." "No, it wouldn't, not really, I
mean, itsy bitsy small." "How small?" "About as big as an atom, say. Well, not
a small atom like hydrogen, one of the bigger ones like gold or lead." He
blinked. "Oh." She smiled. "One drawback, though." "What's that?" "You
couldn't take me with you, you'd arrive as a Weapon without a Wielder." "Oh. I
hadn't thought of that. OK, then I guess we'd have to go the long way round.
What speed do you think you could go and still be able to breathe and stuff?"
"I'd guess a couple of hundred miles per hour at most?" "OK, so getting to the
other side of the planet at 200 mph would take sixty hours, five days." "I'd
get there faster if I took a 747 flight. How fast could you fly if you didn't
have me to worry about?" She blinked. "Well, I could certainly go at orbital
speed, what's that?" "About 45 minutes" "OK, and I could go faster, I'd just
have to vector down a bit. Ten minutes, maybe?" "Kitten, you could fly around
the world and be on the other side ten minutes later?" "I think so, shall I
try it?" He smiled. "I don't think you need to, I'm pretty sure you can do
anything you think you can do. But that still leaves me behind. Look, tomorrow
we'll do a bit of experimenting, see what's possible. Possible for me, I mean,
you seem to be able to do just about anything." She grinned. "Except I
couldn't handle losing a kitten," she pointed out. "You're handling it fine."
"That's because you protected me from my own emotions. Love, protect and
command, and you've done all those today."

"There's one more thing I want to talk out before we go to bed," he said.
"Bed." "Mmm." "How about we do that the other way round?" "What?" "Go to bed
then talk?" "Because once you've got me in bed, you know perfectly well
talking isn't going to be the thing we do." "We could always talk afterwards."
"Not if you do to me what you did last night." "I wasn't planning to go the
whole nine yards." "Three yards." "I doubt if I could handle more than one
yard, last night really took it out of me." "No, I took it out of you. Anyway,
you haven't got a yard, three inches is more like it." "Hey! Four at least.
But three times is not on." "Mmm." "Mmm. And I don't think I'd stay awake
after just one of those, now. Or at least, not awake enough for having a
serious conversation. Anyway, we've already done it three times today."
"Twice" "Three" "Twice, I counted" "No, three, once in the air, once when we
got back, and ... oh. You're right. Twice." "So you owe me one." "Owe?" "Yes.
Three minus two, that's one, so you owe me one." "Er. You might not be able to
collect that debt." "I bet I can" "Yes, you probably can. Wendy, you have a
one track mind." "Probably my deprived background. Do you know, I didn't have
any fun until I was two days old?" "Stop that, kitten." "Stop what?" "What
you're doing with your hand there." "Oh, that." "Plus, we haven't had supper
yet. Are you hungry?" "No, not really. I don't have to eat, you know."

"What?" "Eat. Food. I don't need it, that's not how I get energy." "So how
come you've been eating meals with me?" "Social. I mean, I can eat, and I will
if you do, but I don't actually get hungry, not really. I get energy from
dropping things into a black hole, the fall produces a lot of kinetic energy,
you could reckon that I'd get about half as much as you would if you
completely converted mass into energy. So, I don't really need food. Or drink,
of course." "Well, I do. Pizza time!"


The Weapon - Genesis - part 7
By Diana the Valkyrie
A costume for a superheroine


After eating, it was time for bed. Well, not really, not according to any
normal lifestyle. But she was quite persistent, and virtually dragged him up
the stairs. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" he protested. "My
strength is your strength, my power is your power, your flesh isn't as weak as
it used to be" she replied. "Yes, I know, but." "But me no buts, you just lie
down there quietly, I can see you're totally shagged out, leave it to me. I
promise I'll be gentle."

Gently, she surrounded him with her arms and legs, and drew him deep inside
her using the power that no human woman could call on. Gently she squeezed and
pulsated him, because she could see just how drained he was. And his orgasm,
when it came, was soft and sweet, loving and gentle, just as she'd promised.
It was so totally unlike the violent earthshattering blasts that he'd felt
from her before, he was amazed that the same woman could deliver both. "I will
love you and protect you and obey you. Until the end of time." "I will love
you and protect you and command you. Until the end of time." He lay in her
arms, feeling happy and loved. "And you're my beautiful kitten, my sex
machine, my weapon." "And you're my Wielder, Mr Bigdog. So what was it you
wanted to raise? Apart from that, of course?"

"Clothes. If you're going to rescue kittens from trees and other such heroic
stunts, I think you need a superhero costume, people kind of expect it." She
stood up. "Like this?" He looked up; she'd created a new fourth layer shield,
looking like a blue tunic with a red skirt, boots and cape. And a big S in a
shield. "No, absolutely not. That's just a copy of something you saw. It's
probably copyright, it certainly isn't original, and you do *not* want people
calling you "Supergirl". Do you?" "No, of course not, they can call me the
Weapon, obviously. So then what?" "And you needn't make your hair blonde,
either." "Gentlemen prefer blondes, no?" "You look just fine as a black-hair,
change it back." "OK, then." "And thicker, I mean, more body and bounce?"
"Like this?" She tossed her head, and her hair swirled like a curtain in the
wind.

"OK, first of all, make the tunic white, snow white. If if gets dirty, you'll
be able to clean it on-the-fly, won't you?" "No, but I can just close it down
and start up a new one, same effect." "And a white skirt, no not that short,
you don't want people trying to peek up it, do you?" "Yes, I do actually." "No
you don't, girl, you have to at least pretend to be modest. Make it mid-thigh,
and very full and swirly." She twirled to show how the skirt would fly out.
"Yes, good. And the cape." "Also white?" "Yes, because it'll contrast so well
with your black hair, and white is for purity and virginity, you know?."
"Virginity?" "And purity." "Moi? A virgin? Erm, Duncan, I have news for
you..." "No, kitten, I know, it's just the look we're going for, we're not
actually going to claim that you are." "Oh, OK. Like this?" "Longer." "Like
this?" "Longer" "If I make it any longer, it'll sweep the floor." "That's what
I'm after, about six inches too long." "But ..."

"Now you're all in white, so we add the contrast. A black belt round your
waist, that'll emphasise your figure. Long black leather boots, calf high. OK,
show me now?" She spun and twirled. "It's too long, it's sweeping the floor."
"The thing is, Wendy, you're a flier. Hover several inches above the ground."
"Like this?" "A few inches more. Yes, perfect. And I have a few ideas for how
that lovely long cape can be used." "You mean, this is how people should see
me? Hovering?" "Absolutely, hang on, it needs a logo." "Like the big S?"
"Right, but obviously not that." "I'm a Weapon, it should be a big W" "W is
good, in gold, I think? Yes, nice. But bigger. Bigger. Really big, you've got
a lot of area there in front it can spread over. Yes, good, but now I think
the belt should be gold. Right, great. And put the logo on the cape, too, gold
again. And let's try black gloves. No, not woolly gloves, leather, soft kid
leather? Right." She twisted and twirled. "Like it?" "You look terrific!" "How
tall should I be?" "Wow, I bet no-one ever asked their clothes designer that
question before. How about six foot exactly?" "Thus?" "And make your hair
longer, down to your waist. Yes, very good. No, maybe a few inches more. Yes,
perfect." "But if I'm hovering twelve inches in the air, everyone will have to
look up at me." "Precisely, kitten. I want you to look very female, sexy as
hell, but totally intimidating. The skirt and tunic say "look at me", the
gloves and boots say "Don't mess with her", the height says the same, and you
do not, no way, tangle with a woman who can fly." She smiled. "OK,
Thunderbirds are go!"

"Now come to bed." "Do I undress first?" "What do you think?"

...

"Kitten?" "Mmm." "Come here." "I thought you said you couldn't ... " "I can't.
But I just want to hold you, OK?" "Mmm. Put your head here, in between my,
yes, there. Nice and soft, mmm? Sshhh, now, sleepy time."

...

"Kitten?" "Mmm?" "You aren't breathing." "No, I thought that might keep you
awake." "You thought ... you don't need to ... no, I suppose not. I guess
you're right. But, um, there's no heartbeat either." "I don't have a heart."
"No, but ..." "You think I should?" "Well, maybe not, but if it felt like you
did? A bit of a heartbeat, it feels really strange otherwise" "Like this."
"Yeh. That feels nice. Mmm."

...

"Kitten?" "Mmm?" "I love you."

"My strength is your strength. My power is your power. I will love you and
protect you and obey you. Until the end of time." "Zzzzz"

"Good morning, Duncan!" "What?" "New day, wake up!" "Unhhh..." "Come on,
sleepyhead, the day's waiting for us!" "Wendy, it's Sunday, we sleep late ..."
"Come one, wake up." "Nnnggg..." "OK, shower time." She jumped out of bed,
picked him up and stood him in the shower as she turned the water on both of
them. "AAaaaaarghhhh!!! COLD!!!" "What." "Let me out." "Nope, it's shower
time." "NO! Stop that." She pushed him up against the cubicle wall out of the
falling water, and started to soap him up. "No, Wendy, I can do that." "It's
nicer if I do it, though." "Stop that." He tried to grab her arms, she just
ignored his efforts to stop her. "Wendy, stop it. Weapon, I command you!" She
took no notice, and got him soapy all over, then pulled him back under the
water to rinse him off. "Aaaarghh, it's freezing!" "Come on," she said, "it
isn't that bad." She helped him get out of the shower, then rubbed him down
with the big bath towel. "There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" He looked at
her. "How come you're dry?" "Oh, I just pushed the water off me. Are you
feeling better now?" "No. Why didn't you stop when I commanded you, I thought
you're supposed to obey me? What happened to 'I command and you obey', huh?"
"What, you think I'm some sort of machine?" "Er. Well, um. No, of course not."
"Have you heard of Lord Nelson?" "Of course." "Sometimes the right thing to do
is to disobey orders. Anyway, you were saying "stop" but you didn't actually
want me to, did you?" "No. Yes. Kitten, that water was freezing!"
"Invigorating. And I see you're more than a little invigorated." He looked
down, not that he needed to. "Uh." "Go get dressed, I'll make you breakfast."

When he got down to the kitchen, she'd boiled him a couple of eggs, and there
was toast in the toast rack, and marmite on the table. "Mmm, marmite" he said,
digging in, "but what about you?" "You only had two eggs, and since I don't
really need to eat, I thought ..." He rubbed his knee. "It feels really sore
this morning, I don't know why, I can't remember banging in to anything."
"That'll be muscle soreness." "Why would I have muscle soreness?" "From
vigorous exercise when you aren't used to it." "But I haven't been ... oh, you
mean when we ... ?" She laughed. "No, honey, that isn't your knee." "Then
what?"

"Well, you know you've been having problems with that knee." "Yes, I do, you
noticed?" "Of course I did. You favour it when you stand up or sit down. So I
had a look inside ..." "You what?" "Had a look." "Inside?" "Where else would I
look?" "You have X-ray vision?" "Now there's a thought, I never tried that. I
probably could, yes, but I wouldn't want to use X-rays on you, they are a
little bit damaging. No, I use neutrinos, they penetrate nicely, and do a lot
less damage. So anyway, what it is, is the cartilage is a bit worn down, and
the bones occasionally touch, and that's what hurts." "Great, I always
wondered. But that doesn't help me, short of having knee surgery, which I
don't fancy at all, nothing can be done for cartilage. And why does my knee
hurt this morning?" "Right, the cartilage can't be fixed, but if the muscles
round the knee were a bit stronger, they take more of the stress, and it would
hurt less often." "Yes, so I guess I ought to be doing knee exercises?" She
smiled. "Exactly! And that's why it hurts a bit this morning." "But I didn't
do any knee exercises." "Yes you did, while you were asleep."

"Let me get this straight. You exercised my knee while I was asleep?" "Mmmm."
"Don't you think you should have asked me first?" "What?" "Wendy, you can't
just mess around with someone's body without asking them first." "Oh? So what
do you call sex?" "I call it great. But that's not without my consent, is it."
"No." "So." "Oh." She started to cry. "I was only trying to help." "Oh, Wendy,
I know, look, I'm not really upset, I just wanted you to know that you have to
ask people first, even if you are just trying to help. Now stop crying, brace
up, and have some toast and butter." "Sniff" "Blow" "Bleahurgggghhh" "There
that's better. Kiss?" "Mmmm."

"So. Right. Where's the newspaper?" "Here you go."

"Hmm, look here." "What?" "In the paper, page five. Big forest fire in
Australia, near Melbourne. It's caused lots of casualties already, fifteen
dead, many others with burns, lots of property damage." She came round to look
at the article." "Oh, Duncan, that's terrible, those poor people." He looked
at her. "Maybe this is something for The Weapon?" "Oh! Could I?" "Well, the
first question is, the strategic one, should you? And I think the answer to
that is yes, I can't see any ethical or political downsides to helping to put
out that fire. But the other question is, can you? How would you go about it?"
She thought about it. "People usually use water on fires, right?" "Right."
"Well, there's plenty of water nearby, Melbourne is on the coast." "Two
problems, how to transport it. And the bigger problem; it's salt water. If you
dump salt water on the land, you stop things growing on it in future." "Oh, I
hadn't thought of that. See why I need you, Duncan? OK. Well, I could take the
salt out, just use the water part of it." "You could? But how could you get it
from the sea to the fire?" "Well, I could just sort of, well. Drink it, you
know? And then, er, process it. And then ..." "Piss it out again, yes I see."
"Look, you don't have to be quite so crude about it." "And anyway, one
Wendy-ful of water isn't going to quench much." "I can get more in if I
compress it." "You can't compress water." "Yes you can, it depends how much
pressure you put on it." "You can?" "Sure, you break the hydroxy bonds, and
you can scrunch it up quite small." "How much pressure does that take?" "Quite
a lot. But I've got these black holes, remember? I can scrunch it up with
those."

He stood up. "OK, we have a strategy, we have tactics. Time for action! Get
your costume on." She twirled on one leg. "You got that from Wonder Woman,
didn't you!" She laughed. "Well, it's as good a way as any. How do we get to
Australia?" "I could go by airplane." "Isn't that a complete waste of money?
You've got a perfectly good aircraft standing right here, ready for take-off."
"Yeah, but do you do in-flight entertainment?" "I bet I could entertain you
in-flight better than a Crocodile Dundee movie." "Maybe you could, at that.
How much are the tickets?" "Six-fifty" "OK, you've talked me into it. When do
we check in?" "Now!" and she grabbed him, and took off. "Wait, wait," he said,
"we have to do this properly." "What?"

"Look, you can fly half way round the world in ten minutes, right?" "Sure"
"I'd be dead before ten seconds were up." "Of course, that's why I have to
chug along really slowly." "But we can use your cape. Wrap it round me, all
the way, seal it up so it's airtight." "You'll be alright in there?" "I'll
tell you if I'm not. You just gradually increase your speed, I'll let you know
if I'm in trouble." "Sounds like a good plan." She folded her cape around him
protectively, and put one arm around his waist to hold him against her body.
"Up up, and away!" she shouted, punching the other fist into the air.
"Superman," he muttered, "she's a Superman fan. Nuts."

He couldn't see what was happening, but he felt the acceleration. "How fast
are we going?" he asked. "Umm, a couple of hundred knots. Moving up ... "
"Keep me posted." "We're at ten thousand feet, four hundred knots, are you
OK?" "I'm just fine, it's nice down here. When does the in-flight
entertainment start?" "When we get to cruising speed sir. Please keep your
seat belt on for now." "What seat belt" "My arm round you." "Oh." "We're at
twenty thousand now, over the North Sea, there might be some vibration as we
go supersonic." "Supersonic?" "Faster than sound. OK, Mach one now ..." He
felt a shudder as she broke through the compressed sound waves, then the
flight became smooth and calm again. "OK down there?" "All present and
correct. When do you serve lunch?" "It isn't time for lunch yet." "How about
the drinks trolley?" "You want some milk?" "What? You got milk?" "Kidding."
"Oh. Well, you never know, let's just see ..." "Hey!" "What?" "That tickles"
"It's supposed to tickle." "You do this whenever you fly?" "No, but I sure
plan to in future."

"Mach two, and we're at cruising height, thirty thousand feet. Accelerating up
to Mach three now ..." "Kitten, have you heard of the Five Mile Club?" "Um,
no, what's that about?" "You have to, you know, do it? Five miles up?" "Oh, in
an airplane?" "I don't know if the rules say airplane, I'd guess balloon would
do." "I'm not a balloon." "No, Wendy, I didn't think you were. But ... "
"Look, wait a minute, let me hold you round here ... " "And I'll pull down
your ... Oh." "What?" "You know what we forgot?" "What?" "When we were
designing your costume?" "What?" "Well, you've got a skirt. But ... no
panties?" "No bra either, I assumed it was because I don't really need one,
and it would look kind of silly with a skin-tight lycra top." "Yeah, but no
panties, what could I have been thinking of." "I know exactly what you were
thinking of." "You'll just have to be careful about the skirt flying up when
you're near the ground." "So are you going to just talk about this, or what?"

"Oh."

"Oooh."

"Nice."

"Very."

"Mmmm. Sweetheart, why don't you have a nice nap now, I'll wake you up when we
get there." "How long will that be?" "Uh, about five hours now. You just
snuggle up close, you had a very early wake-up this morning, just get your
head down and nestle in close ... Duncan? Duncan?" "Zzzzzzzzz."

The Weapon - Genesis - part 8
By Diana the Valkyrie
A visit to Australia


She cuddled him close to her body as they flew high over Europe; over the
Indian Ocean she increased speed to Mach four, curving round the south of
Australia to approach Melbourne from the sea. As she came close to the city,
she saw the big smudge of smoke rising from the forest fire. She slowed down
to a couple of hundred knots, and woke Duncan. "This is your pilot speaking,
we have arrived at Melbourne, the weather is fine and clear, but smoky." "Huh?
Wha?" "You want a quick dip in the cold sea? Help wake you up?" she asked.
"No, Wendy, I'm fine, open your cape, let's have a look." She hovered in place
and opened up her cape so he could see. "Wow. See all that smoke?" "Uh huh,
it's still on fire." "OK, don't head for the smoke, we need to find the
firefighter's headquarters." "Why don't I just put the fire out." "Because if
you do, a lot of people will be very pissed off." "Why? We're helping them,
doing them a favour." "That's just the way people are, Wendy. You have to do
things their way, otherwise they make themselves into part of the problem."
"Well, I can deal with that, too." "Yes, I know you can, but, well, I think
this is why you have a Wielder, kitten. You don't do something just because
you *can* do it. Come on, lets get to the middle of Melbourne."

They landed in the financial area, skyscrapers all around them. If you've
never been to Australia, you might have mental pictures of sheep and
crocodiles, and people wearing funny hats and slurping the amber nectar.
Actually, it looked rather like London on a summer's day, apart from the pall
of smoke they could see in the sky. Duncan hailed a taxi, and they bundled
into it. "The nearest fire station, please?" The cabbie took them there,
Duncan paid the $6.50 fare by credit card (thank heaven for plastic) and they
hopped out. He turned to her. "Twelve inches, Wendy." She rose up, so that her
cape no longer trailed in the dirt. He looked up at her. "You know, you look
so majestic like that, so dominant. It's amazing what a few inches of height
will do." She grinned. "Now what?"

They entered the fire station, and he spoke to reception, a man at a desk. "We
need to talk to the people at headquarters, about the forest fire." "And you
are?" "I'm Duncan McCrae." "And she is?" "She is The Weapon" He wrote it down.
The function of some people is to do what their job says they should do, and
they are not supposed to think. "And your contact details?" "Look, we've just
flown in from England to here, we've got a way to help you with this forest
fire. We can really help a lot; could I talk with the people in charge of the
fire-fighting effort?" "Contact details?" Not supposed to think. Duncan gave
his address and phone number. "Thank you sir, we'll contact you in due
course."

He closed his eyes, and opened them slowly. "Look, we've just flown in from
... " "Yes, sir, you said that. Now if you don't mind, we have a lot to do
here ..." Duncan looked at Wendy, and she looked back at him. He nodded to
her, and took a step back. "Go on. You try."

She moved around the desk, and put her gloved hands under the receptionist's
armpits, lifting him onto his feet. He looked up at her face, about eighteen
inches above him, then down at her feet hovering several inches off the floor.
He looked at her costume, at her cape, at her logo, and at the place where her
logo was proudly and prominently displayed. "You know who I am?" she asked,
softly. He swallowed. "Er, yes, I mean, no, I mean, er." "I'm The Weapon, and
I'm here to help you, honey." "Yes, er, Ms Weapon." "So here's what you're
going to do. You're going to take us to your leader." "Yes, er." "Yes what?"
"Yes, Ms Weapon." "Good. That's nice, and we can all be friends." She patted
him on the cheek. "OK, let's go, then." "This way," he said, and led then back
outside. Duncan whispered "Wendy, now you see why the costume is such a good
idea." She smiled. "Plus a bit of intimidation ..."

"I'll take you, but all I've got is my motorbike, I can only take one of you."
"No problem at all" said Duncan, climbing on the pillion seat. "You just go
on, she'll follow." The receptionist took them to a large building near the
Yarra river, and stopped. "Here you go, mate. The person you want to see is
Captain Gossage" Duncan climbed off the bike; Wendy landed nearby. "Thank you
for helping us, Bruce" she said to him, "I won't forget that." He stared at
her, open-mouthed, as they headed into the building, Wendy floating just a few
inches behind Duncan, and following him in tight formation.

Just inside the building, he grabbed her hand. "Post-mortem, kitten." "What?"
"I just want to talk about your performance just now." "Oh?" "The 'Do you know
who I am' was very good, very good indeed. He obviously didn't know who you
are, but you appeal to the right myths." She smiled. "One thing I'd suggest,
though. If you stand with your hands on your hips, you'll look a lot more
aggressive and dominant than the arms folded look." She nodded. "I know. I
didn't want to scare him too much, he was shaking as it was. Much more and his
mouth would have gone dry, and he'd have been useless." "Yes, he was almost
wetting himself as it was. OK, I see you have this all under control already."
"Tactics, Duncan, that's my area. You're strategy. So what's the strategy
here?" "First we need to get in to see the Big Cheese on this, then we need to
convince him that he wants your help." "With a forest fire out of control, he
shouldn't be too picky about accepting help!" "But he will. He'll have had
loads of lunatic ideas chucked at him by now, and the last thing he wants is a
couple of civilians getting killed trying out another loony idea." "But we're
not loonies, and a forest fire isn't going to kill me, not even singe."
"Wendy, you know that and I know that. Now we need to convince him." "But why
don't I just ..." "We already talked about that, love. We want the ordinary
folks on our side, we don't want to be fighting them all the time. By the way,
how did you know his name was Bruce?" "Oh, aren't all Australians called
Bruce?" she grinned.

They got as far as the receptionist, who looked up at them. "Yes?" "McCrae and
Weapon, here to see Gossage, do you know the floor?" "Floor 33, do you have an
appointment?" "No" "He's a very busy man, I'll see if he's free." She called
up and spoke on the phone. "I'm afraid he's in an important meeting right
now." "OK, we'll wait," said Duncan, "can we use your toilet for a moment?"
"Sure," she said, "over there." He led Wendy in the direction she'd pointed,
but instead of the toilets, he walked into the stairwell. "Lift, 33rd floor,
going up," he said. "You need the exercise," she replied. "Aw, c'mon Wendy,
I'd be knackered before I got halfway." She grinned. "Come here, sugar." She
put her arms round him, kissed him, and spiraled up the staircases till they
got to there. "Here you are, sir, 33rd floor, ladies lingerie" she said,
putting him back on his feet. He checked her over, "You look fine. Twelve
inches up remember." "These ceilings are only just over seven feet." "Wendy,
if your head brushes against the ceiling, that'll be just fine."

They moved along the corridor until they got to a big meeting room, where they
could hear voices. "OK, Wendy, do your thing. Take control." Duncan opened the
door, and Wendy swept in, regally. The discussion that had been going on
halted as everyone turned to look at her, hardly noticing Duncan behind her.
"Hello," she said, brightly. No-one spoke. She moved towards the table. "You
people know who I am. And I'm here to help you put out that fire." Several
people started to talk at once. "Who ... " "How ... " "What ..." "One at a
time, fellows. You can call me The Weapon. What would you most like to help
deal with this fire, right now?" "Rain," said the man at the head of the
table, "but there's not a cloud in the sky, and nothing forecast for the next
week." "I can make it rain within the next hour," she said.

"Impossible" "No way" "You're dreaming." She raised her voice slightly.
"Quiet!" They shut up. "I can make it rain within the next hour," she
repeated, "and I'm not in the habit of making promises I can't keep, or of
repeating myself. Is that clear?" A few of them nodded. "Right, then. Which of
you is Captain Gossage?" The man at the head of the table raised his hand.
"How much rain will it take, and how big an area will need to be covered?" He
thought for a moment. Half an inch would be wonderful. Any amount would help."
"How about two inches? And what sort of area needs the rain?" "Same answer,
anything would be better than nothing, but there's about 400 square miles
either burning or at risk." She thought for a moment. "OK, that's about 50
million tons of water. No problem."

Duncan wondered for a moment why she'd made that calculation, then he
realised, she was comparing the mass of the water with her own one billion ton
mass. It meant that she'd be five percent heavier while she was carrying the
water, and he guessed that she'd decided that would be no problem. "When do
you want it?" she asked.

"Listen, Sheila," said one of the men round the table, a large, heavy-looking
fellow. "Stop pissing about and get back to your kitchen, we have a serious
emergency to handle here." She came around the table to stand in front of him,
he pushed his chair back so he could see her. "Stand up." He sat still,
looking up at her defiantly. She reached down and lifted him up. "I said,
stand up. That's better. Now, do you know who I am?" He shook his head. "I am
The Weapon. Now, who are you?" "John Partridge." "Wrong. You're a weasel, and
a fool, and you're the man who refused my help when I offered it." She put her
hands on her hips, and stared into his eyes. He met her gaze, then looked
away. "Sit down." He sat. "When do you want it," she asked Gossage. "The
sooner the better, Ms Weapon. Right away would be perfect, sooner would be
even better." She grinned. Then I'd better get going, hadn't I? Give me half
an hour. Do these windows open?" "No" "Wrong."

Crash! She went straight out of the window, and everyone rushed to the side of
the room to watch her go. She flew up into the sky, then curved round to
Hobson's bay, and they lost sight of her in the heat haze. "Well," said
someone, "I guess we can get back to business now? We still have a fire to
fight." Gossage shook his head. "I'm not so sure. If she can fly like that,
then maybe ..." He beckoned Duncan, who had been standing by the door while
Wendy had handled the meeting. "You're with her?" "Yes." "And you are?"
"Duncan McCrae." "OK, McCrae, what's she capable of?" He came to the table,
and took an empty chair. "If she says she's going to make it rain two inches
of water over 400 square miles, then that's exactly what she's going to do."
"But how? There isn't a cloud in the sky?" "Why do you think she was heading
for the Hobson's Bay?" "Blimey, I don't know. Visiting the Botanical Gardens
there?" "Look, it's very simple. She's going to pick up 50 million tons of
water and dump it on your fire."

There was a long silence. "No way." Duncan sighed. "Look, it's been a long day
for me. I was dragged out of bed at an ungodly hour, and eight hours ago I was
in England. I've missed lunch, and I didn't have much for breakfast. If you
don't believe that she can do anything she says she can do, then I suggest you
get a glazier in to fix the window that a hallucination just flew through, and
then start trying to explain the sudden, totally unexpected and very heavy
rainfall that's about to quench your forest fire." There was another long
silence. "And, by the way, what you guys should be doing, is planning how to
clean up the mess she's about to make, because that much water in so short a
time is going to cause very big flooding problems when it all comes back down
the Yarra."

Captain Gossage stood up. "Jim, Bruce, we need to get down to the operations
room. Mr McCrae, I'd be grateful if you joined us there, we're going to need
your advice, this is all rather new to us. The rest of you, start developing a
plan for what will happen when 50 million tons of water comes flooding down
the Yarra, how much will the river rise, who do we need to evacuate, that sort
of thing." "You really believe ...?" one of the men said. "Jim. Do you believe
a girl can fly?" "No. Well, not until just now." "Right. Me too."

On the way to the ops room, Gossage said "I hope she isn't about to convert a
disaster into a catastrophe." "No, I don't think so," said Duncan. "She'll
have thought of the flooding issue, I guess, and she wouldn't dump two inches
of rain if that would cause really big problems. But one way or another, once
that fire is out, you'll still have a huge mess to clear up." They arrived at
the ops room, there were a couple of dozen people round the edge, working the
phones, and a big map in the middle of the room, showing the state of the fire
and the location of the fire fighting units. "Wow," said Duncan, "this looks
like a Battle of Britain fighter control station." "We are fighting a battle,
Mr McCrae. Fighting, and losing. The fire is only half a mile from the
built-up areas of the city, and the wind is against us. I've lost fifteen good
men and women dead, and thirty nine injured, burned. We have all our units in
action, and I was just about to order civilian evacuation of the threatened
area, that was what we were discussing just then. An evacuation would be a
very big step, it would have put fifty thousand people out of their homes,
maybe 100,000 because people would hear about it and decide to go even though
we didn't tell them to, and would have meant more casualties among the sick
and infirm civilians. If we can avoid that, then we've saved a few dozen lives
right there. Frankly, we were at the end of our resources, and if your girl
can do what she says ... " "She can. She doesn't make promises that she can't
keep." "If she can do what she says, then she's an angel from heaven as far as
I'm concerned." "Actually, you're not that far off," said Duncan.

One of the girls on the phones came over to join them. "Captain?" she said.
"Yes, Judy?" She looked at Duncan. "He's OK," said Gossage, "what is it?"
"Another casualty." "How bad." She said nothing, just stared at the floor.
"Very bad," she whispered. "What?" "Simon Robson, on duty at the Warrandyte
area, he's got 90% burns." Gossage blinked. "Sally Robson, she's on duty here,
she's his mother. Judy, go tell Margaret in Personnel, then you and Margaret
tell Sally. And Sally's relieved from duty, you two look after her." Judy
nodded, looking pale, and hurried off. "Oh god, McCrae, your girl, she's all
I've got to hope for now, if she can't ... I can't take much more of this,
I've had fifteen of these, he's number sixteen, I know these guys and I'm
sending them off to die." "Sit down, Gossage. There's nothing we can do right
now. It's in her hands." Gossage sat, his face expressing his misery.

And then Sally screamed. "No!!!" and everyone looked round at her. She put her
hands over her face and moaned. The two women led her away, sobbing
uncontrollably. Duncan looked back at Captain Gossage; there were tears on his
cheeks too. "Damn damn damn, I feel so bloody helpless." "She'll come through
mate, she always does."

A voice cut through the noise in the ops room. "Rain" "What?" "Rain, it's
raining!" "Where, where?" "Eltham" "Rain here too!" "Where?" "Keon Park."
"Tullamarine" "Greensborough" "It's not raining, it's bloody pouring!" "Cats
and dogs" "A flood" "It's pissing down!" "A deluge" "Start building the arks!"
"Hurrah!" Cheers rang out in the ops room, and Captain Gossage looked up.
Duncan patted his arm. "Told you. She's done it." "Really?" "You heard. It's
raining." "Fifty million tons of water. How the hell ...?" "How doesn't
matter. And I don't think that either of us could really understand how. The
important thing is that she did. Captain Gossage, the Weapon has extinguished
your fire!"

There was a whoosh of air, and suddenly she was standing next to Duncan. "Oh,
there you are," she said, "all done, you ready to go? We can get back in time
for supper. I thought I'd fry up a couple of nice fish I found." He looked up
at her. "Yes, dear." She turned to Gossage. "Oh, Captain, I have a souvenir
for you." She reached behind her, under her cape, and pulled out a golden
statuette, twelve inches high, it was a woman, reaching for the sky in full
flight, her cape streaming out behind, a big W on the cape. "Oh! Oh, it's
beautiful. You made this?" She nodded. He hefted it. "It's gold. I can't take
this." "Why not? It's a gift, no strings. Enjoy it." "Wendy, where did it come
from, you didn't have it when we left England?" "I just made it, the gold came
from the seawater, I had to get the minerals out anyway before I put the water
on the fire." "You just desalinated fifty million tons of water?" "Sure. Oh,
and Duncan, I gave that other guy, you remember, from the other fire station?
I gave him a silver one, he was ever so pleased. Come on, Duncan, we can get
home for supper if we leave now. The fish is fresh, I only just caught it"


The Weapon - Genesis - part 9
By Diana the Valkyrie
The Weapon in pain


Sally Robson came back into the Ops room, together with the two women who were
supporting her. She saw Wendy, and screeched. "Bitch! BITCH! You killed him,
he's dead and it's your fault." "No, no" said Wendy. "Yes, you bitch, my baby,
my baby, he's dead and you did it, if you'd got here sooner, he'd still be
walking around, I hate you - I hate you," she screamed. Wendy looked
horrified. "But, but I ..." "Fuck off, just fuck off, bitch, I hate you."
Wendy looked wildly round the room, and dived out of a window. Duncan ran to
the window and shouted to a rapidly vanishing white dot. "Wendy, no! Come
back!" but it was too late, she'd gone. He turned back to the room, and
started to say something to Sally, then he caught himself. A woman who has
just lost a son isn't ready for calm debate about blame. "Come on, Sally,
we're taking you home," said the women with her. "Bitch, bitch," muttered
Sally.

"Oh god, I'm sorry about that," said Gossage, holding out both his hands, "but
you know the situation. I'll apologise to your girl when she comes back."
"When she comes back. God knows where she is now, she could be halfway to Mars
by now." "Really?" "Yes, really. And she's crying." "Crying? She looks hard as
nails to me, she just put out a forest fire single handed." "I know her, you
don't. She's crying. Oh shit, she's crying, and I'm not with her. Half the
reason she has me around is this sort of situation and I let her down again."
"Again?" "Don't ask." "Is she going to be OK in Mars, or wherever."
"Physically? Yeah, I don't think there's anything that can actually hurt that
girl. But she's crying, she's hurt inside."

"She really made this herself?" "Yes. She didn't have it when we left England,
she must have. Made two of them, actually. No, at least two, she might have a
few more around, I don't know. It is good, isn't it?" "Yeah." They sat and
admired the statue. "The Weapon. What's that, it's written on the base."
"That's her, she's The Weapon." "What's that about." Duncan sighed. "Don't
ask. And I've failed her again, I should have jumped in while all that was
still going and shut that poor mother up." "Yeah? How, a punch on the kisser?"
Duncan closed his eyes. "I don't know. All I know is, she's out there crying
her eyes out, and I can't do a damn thing about it." "There is one thing you
can do." "What's that?" "I've been fighting this goddamn fire for two weeks
now, without a day off, no break, fifteen - no, sixteen good people have died
on account of it, and there's dozens that won't die because of your girl The
Weapon, and I think you and I should get out and get totally blotto. I know
I'm going to. Coming along?" Duncan looked around. "Yeah, might as well. I'm
not doing anyone any good here."

* * *

"What's it like?" "What's what like?" "You know. Living with a goddess." "She
isn't a goddess." "You know what I mean." "Don't ask."

* * *

"Don't keep looking up in the sky. Even if she's there you won't see her." "I
know. But." "But what?" "I don't know. Am I making sense?" "No. Have another
Fosters." "OK"

* * *

"She cooks too?" "No, we mostly eat out or get takeaways, but if she says she
can cook, they you can bet she can." "She's never cooked for you before?"
"We've only been together a couple of days." "Gordon Bennett. You two
married?" "Not on paper." "Know what you mean, nudge nudge." "Have another
beer"

* * *

"She really takes you flying?" "That's how we got here." "How fast does she
go?" "I don't think there's a limit, actually, except if she's carrying me,
she has to be a bit careful." "So how fast?" "We hit Mach 4 over the Indian
Ocean." "You can stand the airstream at Mach 4?" "She wraps me in her cape."
"Oh. What's the cape made of, then?" "Don't ask."

* * *

"Aren't you afraid that she might, well, hurt you? In a moment of anger, or in
the throes of passion or something?" "No." "But she could, couldn't she." "Not
a chance." "But she carried fifty million tons of water, and if she
accidentally ... " "Gossage, put a sock in it."

* * *

"What's it like when you both, like, you know. Together." "Goss, you looking
for a punch up the bracket?" "Sorry, mate"

* * *

Round about the fifth bar, Duncan fell off his chair. "Oops." Gossage giggled.
"Want another?" "Twist my arm." "OK, mate ... oops." Gossage joined him on the
floor. The barman came over. "I think you two fellas have had all you need,
you got a home to go to?" "Don't remember", said Gossage, "not seen it for a
couple weeks." "Yeah, but it's twelve thubbly bubbly doodle oops," added
Duncan. "OK, that's it, I'm calling you a cab." Duncan looked at Gossage, who
looked back. "YOU'RE A CAB," they chorused.

* * *

Duncan, lying on the couch in Gossages living room, half woke up, his mouth
feeling like a used strip of sandpaper. "urg", he groaned. He shifted
slightly, and felt a body curled up behind him, cuddling him, like two spoons.
"Aaarghh...," he yelled, "Gossage?" He sat bolt upright and looked around
wildly. The first thing he saw was about a yard of black hair. "Wendy?" "Hi,
Duncan. Boy, you had a skinful last night." "Oh. Thank god. I thought you were
... never mind. Where've you been, out to Mars and back?" "Er, no. The other
way." "Where?" "I went down the the middle of the sun and had a good cry." He
put his arms round her. "Oh, Wendy. I knew you were crying, and I wanted to
hug you, but I couldn't, I felt awful." "Felt pretty bad myself." "She didn't
know what she was saying, she'd just lost her son, and she just wasn't being
rational, it's not surprising. But you didn't kill her son, no matter what she
said. Gossage said that without you there, he'd have had to evacuate 50,000
people, maybe 100,000 and that would have caused dozens of deaths. You saved a
lot of lives yesterday, Wendy." "I suppose so. But Duncan. She was right. If
we'd got there a bit earlier, her son wouldn't have died. Don't you see? She
was hysterical, but she was right. And that's why I was crying."

He pulled her closer, and cuddled her. "Wendy, you can't think that way, it's
the wrong way round. There's a three hundred thousand people die each day. You
can't save all of them." "I could try." "No, you couldn't, Wendy. I know
there's a lot you can do, but you can't be everywhere and do everything.
People have to live their lives, and one day we all die, we get 70 years, 100
tops, it's the way things are." "Not always, Duncan. I'll be around a lot
longer than that." He looked at her. "But you're not human, you keep telling
me that. Don't think about the ones you didn't help, think about the ones you
did. Any doctor will tell you the same. You just can't win them all, it's good
enough to just win some of them. The middle of the sun?" She nodded. "Wow."
"It's nice and peaceful there." "Peaceful?" "Well, it's kind of loud, but it's
a peaceful sort of loud, you know? And it's safe and warm there. I like it"
"Warm? You call 30 million degrees warm?" "Mmm. Don't worry, I used sun block.
And you don't get much safer than the middle of a star." "Sun block?" "Look,
Duncan, I stripped right down, you know what I mean? Right down. And when I
said I was crying, I don't mean water running down cheeks, I mean crying
inside me." He held her tighter. "Wendy Wendy Wendy. My little kitten." She
purred. "Anyway, while I was sitting down there, I thought about things." "And
what did you think?" "I thought, the reason I have a Wielder is because he's
supposed to know about this kind of thing, so I should go find him and ask him
about it." "And here you are." "Well, yes and no. I found you hours and hours
ago, but you were so disgustingly drunk I couldn't even wake you up." "Oh
shit. I let you down again." "Yes and I'm really angry with you." "You are?"
"Yes, and now I'm going to punish you." "Punish me?" "Yes. You are hereby
sentenced to have your brains fucked out."

* * *

After half an hour or so, the noises died down. "We must have woken Gossage up
with that," said Duncan. "Couldn't you, you know, muffle things a bit?" she
asked. "You're kidding. With you doing that? I've barely got enough self
control to breathe." She chuckled. "It's all right for you, you don't need to.
But I do, and, well, since I've got my mouth open for that anyway ... " She
tickled the fur on his chest, and looked up. "He's still asleep. You two
really hung one on last night." "Yes, well. He's been working practically
non-stop the last two weeks because of the fire you just put out, and I was
worried about you." "Oh, Duncan. Worried about me? Really? I told you, I'm
really hard to damage." "Kitten, you were crying, and that's because you were
hurting." "There is that," she admitted. "Anyway, I feel pretty good now,
you're here, the sun is shining and I don't even have a hangover. Hey. Wait a
minute. How come I don't have a hangover?" "Don't ask, love, think kidney
metabolism and yes, I know I didn't ask you first but you were hardly in any
condition to be asked. Look, let's just leave a note for Gossage and get back
home, huh? Oh, and I made this for Mrs Robson" It was a gold statue of a fire
fighter, a man, in an action pose. On the base, it said "Simon Robson,
Firefighter". "Wendy, that's lovely, you made that?" "Yes; you get quite a lot
of gold in 50 million tons of seawater.

To: Captain Gossage

Well, we really hit the town last night, huh? The good news is, she came back
last night and I woke up with her wrapped round me. She'd spent a few hours at
the center of the sun, she said it was nice and peaceful there and she had a
chance to have a good cry and a think. Anyhow, she's OK now. You were so fast
asleep this morning that we didn't want to wake you. Please give the statue to
Mrs Robson, with our sympathy and regret that we were too late for her son.
We'll probably be back in England by the time you wake up. Her email address
is weapon@theweapon.net if anyone needs to contact her.

"Duncan, it'll take us several hours to get back, you know?" "Well. I was
thinking. Suppose we went sub-orbital." "You mean, straight up almost, half an
orbit, then re-entry?" "Right. Your cape worked so well at mach four, I didn't
feel a thing, so it should be OK for re-entry. And it was airtight, I'd have
felt the draft if it wasn't. And we can pick up a Scuba outfit, like they use
for diving, one set of tanks will hold enough air for an hour, and the cape
will be pressurised against the vacuum." "OK, let's do that, except we won't
need the Scuba." "The cape won't hold enough oxygen for me, Wendy." "No
problem, my Wielder. You breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide.
I'll just split that back to carbon and oxygen. Good grief, even a cabbage can
do that, it's hardly a big deal." He looked at her. "You know what? I should
have thought of that. I guess I'm just not used to what you're capable of."
"That's why we're going through this learning process, sweetheart."

She held him in her arms, her legs round his thighs, his head on her breasts,
and she wrapped her cape around them both. "Stand by for lift-off," she said,
"two, one, we have ignition ... " "Up, up and away," he replied. "Going up
..." He felt the sensation of three gravities for several minutes, then there
was no weight at all. "We have orbit," she announced. "Please leave your
safety belts fastened, you'll find the in-flight entertainment center if you
lift my skirt. And no smoking, please."

* * *

The Weapon - Genesis - part 10
By Diana the Valkyrie
The statue


"Please do not leave your position until the vehicle has come to a complete
halt." He woke up. "What?" "Honey, we're home." She opened her cape, and he
saw the familiar surroundings. "I can't believe we were in Australia less than
an hour ago"! "Yup, sub-orb is definitely the way to go on these long trips.
But you haven't eaten for nearly 24 hours, you must be ravishing." "Ravenous"
"I know what I meant." She reached behind into her cape, and showed him the
two fish. "You've still got those?" "Uh, well." "You can not have taken those
into the sun with you." "Well, obviously not. I left them at the L1 Lagrangian
point, about a million miles sunwards of the Earth." "But that's not a
completely stable orbit" "Sure, but it was only for a few hours, they were
fine when I got back." He shook his head. "I'm about to eat fried fish that
spent hours in earth orbit." "Actually, they were in a solar orbit, and I'm
grilling them, fried food is bad for your arteries." "My Weapon, the cook and
dietician" She grinned at him. "And other talents too." "I know," he said,
ruefully, "I'm just starting to discover the stresses of sub-orbital flight."
"That wasn't flight stress, that was me." "Yes, but you do it every time."
"Sure. Isn't that what flying is all about?" "Mmm. It's the only way to fly."

"Oh, and I have a present for you." She reached behind into her cape. "I think
I've got that one figured out." "What?" "All this stuff you have in your cape.
You don't even have a pocket there." She grinned. "It's like you keep
producing rabbits from a top hat. The rabbits weren't actually in the top hat,
you just make it look like that's where they come from." "So ..?" "You aren't
keeping stuff in your cape, you're keeping stuff inside yourself, am I right?"
"Ten out of ten, but you wouldn't like it if I pulled two fish from inside me
and cooked them for you, would you?" "No, you're right. It's a good illusion,
and you're right to use it." She brought her hand back into view. She was
holding a statue, made of some silvery metal. He looked up at her. "What's it
made of?" he said, cautiously. "Don't worry, I wouldn't give you anything
radioactive. It's only platinum. Here, look." He went to take it from her
hand. "Uh, use both hands, Duncan." He reached out with both hands, and she
carefully gave it to him. "Jesus, what does this weigh?" "About sixty pounds,
platinum is even heavier than gold."

He looked at the statue, eighteen inches tall, it showed a woman in flight,
one arm stretched out to the sky. A man had his arms round her neck, his face
buried in her chest. Her other arm was holding him closely and protectively.
Her cape streamed dramatically out behind them, her hair fluttering and
curling in the wind of passage. "Oh, Wendy. Oh, oh. It's magnificent." She
smiled. "You know, if you ever need another career, you'd make a great
sculptress. But this must be worth, wow, what?" "About half a million. You
gonna sell it?" "No way, Wendy. Absolutely no way. This is something to keep
for ever." She smiled. "I'm glad you like it." "You got the metal from that
seawater again?" She nodded. "You wouldn't believe the amount of junk that's
dissolved in 50 million tons of seawater. Not to mention zillions of fish and
stuff. I chucked most of it back, but I kept a couple of the fish, and some of
the nicer metal." He put the statue in the centre of the table. "It'll go
there for now, I'll think later where to put it permanently. Oh. But it's so
valuable, what if it gets stolen?" "Well, first of all, it doesn't really look
valuable, I mean, no-one except you and me know what it's made of, it might be
plastic if you just look at it." "Mmm. And second?" "If it does get nicked,
I'll just make another one. It's just a statue, Duncan, not a human life."
"True," he said, "Are you OK on Simon Robson now?" She nodded. "Yeh, I'm fine.
I just needed you to tell me it was OK." "Well, it is OK. Very OK." He moved
forwards and pulled her down into his arms. "Your strength is my strength"
"Mmm." "So - let's use it. Kitten - I command you - up to bed!"

* * *

Next day, he woke up, and cautiously opened his eyes. The first thing he saw
was her big blue eyes, looking down at him, a gentle smile written across
them. "Hello, sleepybaby." "Unhhh. Umm. Wendy?" She kissed him. "Wendy, I've
never seen you asleep. You don't sleep, do you?" "Of course not. Spending a
third of your life unconscious and out of action is no way for a Weapon to
behave. What if I was needed? Sorry, we can't fight you just now, our Weapon
is asleep." "But you spend several hours in bed with me each night, don't you.
Or do you? Do you go wandering while I'm asleep?" "No, of course I don't. You
might wake up, and then I wouldn't be there." "So what do you do while I'm
asleep, you just lie there?" "Not entirely. I do a bit of thinking, and a bit
of learning, and a bit of talking." "Talking? Who with?" "Oh, anyone. You
know?" "No, I don't know. I'm fast asleep and my kitten is out talking with
other people?" "It's not like that. Listen. You know how moving electrons
create a magnetic field?" "Of course" "And how a changing magnetic field
induces an electric current?" "Elementary electricity, sure." "Well, I just
move some electrons and change some magnetic fields, and I induce a current in
your telephone system." "Uh. And?" "Well, it's like, um, a modem? I can make
it do the whistles and stuff." "Ah. So it's just like you had a computer
connected to it!" "No difference, really. While you're asleep, I'm surfing the
internet." "Without a computer." "Well, you know, if you look at me one way
..." "I know, you are a computer, I just don't tend to think of you like
that." "You're a computer too, just different hardware." "And different
software," he said, bringing his hands up to touch her software.

"Yes," she said, "but right now, it's time for your morning shower. You want
it cold, or freezing?" "Neither, hey, HEY, put me down, stop that, no, look,
you aren't supposed to, STOP THAT." She threw back the bedclothes and scooped
him out of bed, hustling him into the bathroom. He fought back, but she pinned
him against the wall and turned on the water. "Aaaargghhh ... splutter gurgle
splowth spreargh." When she'd finished, she let him out and rubbed him down
hard with a towel. "There, isn't that better?" "I don't understand you, Wendy.
One minute you're loving and submissive, next minute you're torturing me."
"Well, you know, I reckon that if you had it all your own way, you'd lose
track of what's what, so I think for a few minutes each day, I want to make
you do what I want, not what you want. Now go get dressed, it's eggs for
breakfast." "But we had the last of them yesterday." "I got more."

* * *

The Weapon - Genesis - part 11
By Diana the Valkyrie
The dam


"Scrambled eggs and toast with marmalade, yummy. But where did you get the
eggs?" "I robbed a couple of nests." "Wendy!" "What?" "What about the poor
birds?" "Oh, and you think hens don't mind either?" "I suppose." "Anything in
the newspaper?" "Sex scandals, NHS failures, wars, another Legionnaire's
victim, a food scare, more taxes on more things, flood ..." "Flood?" "A dam
gave way, eighteen casualties, damage." She came round behind him and read the
paper over his shoulder. "How about that one, then?" "Not a lot of point,
kitten, the damage is already done, it's just a clear-up job now." "I bet a
flying bulldozer would come in handy, though." He looked up at her. "You
could, couldn't you. But they should be able to clear the mess up without your
help." "But suppose there's people stranded or something. House flooded, no
food, not enough evacuation helicopters?" "You want to be a helicopter or a
bulldozer, which?" "You know what I mean." "I'm sure they're coping." "But it
wouldn't hurt to pop over there and take a look, would it?" "I suppose not,
Colorado, where's that?" "America someplace, come one, let's go." "Wait a
moment, Wendy, let's get a few things together first." "I've got all we need
right here," she said, standing tall with her arms held apart. "Uh. Water.
Sandwiches. Warm jacket. Credit card. Passport. You might not need this stuff,
but I do." "Nonsense. All you need is me, and I'm ready for lift-off." He
sighed, and took a last look round the room. He walked into her embrace, she
kissed him, wrapping her cape around him as she did, and then he felt the
familiar press of three g as she lifted him off into near-earth orbit.

"Wendy, there's been something I've been meaning to talk to you about." "You
have a complaint about the in-flight entertainment?" "You know I don't. No,
it's your name." "What about it. I don't have a name, you decided you wanted
to call me Wendy, or Kitten when you're feeling, you know, so what's the
problem?" "It's what other people call you. 'The Weapon' isn't right, I mean,
it doesn't sound right." "But that's what I am." "Yes, but what you are, and
what you are called, isn't the same thing." She sighed. "OK, suppose we just
tell people I'm Wendy McCrae?" "Hey, I like the sound of that. But no, that's
too ordinary." "Then what? Queen of England?" "No, you can't be that, the
job's already occupied. But what you are, is you're the defender of humanity,
right?" "No, that's you, Duncan. You're the Wielder, I'm the Weapon that you
wield." "Yeah, I know, I know. But the fact is, without you I'm just another
tubby middle aged man with a bad knee, the only thing I can attack with any
chance of success is my refrigerator. How about 'Defender of the People'?"
"Sounds bloody pompous to me," she replied. "Yeah, but you can't let everyone
call you 'Wendy', you've got to maintain a kind of aloof dignity?" "Aloof?
What keeps the lain out?" He groaned. "You know, if anyone ever doubts whether
you're human, that right there is your proof." "OK, OK. I'm Wendy McCrae,
informally known as Kitten, formally called 'The Weapon, Defender of the
People'. I came here without a name, now I've got half a dozen."

Seven minutes later, they were weightless, half an hour later they were
touching down. "These trips are too quick now," she complained. "Too quick for
what?" "You know what." "Work first, play afterwards. Look, there's the
breached dam, what a mess! Did you see any people standing on rooftops waving
for help?" "No, I didn't, but look, there's a bunch of vehicles near the dam,
let's go see what that's about."

It was a temporary headquarters, the base of the rescue and damage control
operation. It said "Kettering Construction" on the side. "No receptionists,"
commented Duncan, "go straight in, kitten." She landed outside the biggest
cabin, and opened the door. Seven heads swivelled to look at the new arrival.
"Hi, guys," she said, "Here I am. How's things going?" "Who are you?" asked
one of them. She stood by the side of the table, hovering several inches in
the air, her arms folded under her breasts. "I'm the Weapon, Defender of the
People, if you need a flying bulldozer I'm your girl." "Jeez, that's all we
need. Fuck off, lady, we got real problems here."

She turned to face him, resting her hands on her hips. "Stand up, asshole." He
remained seated. She moved to stand behind him, turned his chair to face her,
and pulled him out of his chair. "I said, stand up," she repeated, softly. She
was frowning, and her hands were clenched tightly into fists. "Now, do you
know who I am?" she asked, her fist gently stroking the tip of his nose. He
was silent, unable to speak. "You've got some real problems here, it might
just be that someone like me can help with some of them. You still want me to
fuck off?" She floated, vertical, in the air above him, he had to look up at
her. Her breasts blocked his view of her face, and the knuckles of her fist
moved to stroke his cheek, very lightly, very softly, but emphasising his
complete helplessness in her hands. He coughed, then coughed again. She turned
away from him in contempt as a paroxysm of coughing crumpled him up. She
addressed the other guys. "So, how did this happen? Was it an explosion,
sabotage, what?"

One of the men put up his hand. "Yes?" "Please Miss, can I talk with you?"
"Sure, go ahead." He looked around. "Not here. Please?" She looked at Duncan,
Duncan nodded very slightly. "OK, come outside." The three of them left the
cabin, and stood outside. They could see the broken dam, water still pouring
over the breach. "I know what happened," he said, "and I'm scared." "Why?" she
asked. "I'm going to be the fall guy for this."

"Tell me about it." "The reason the dam breached, was that we had a lot of
rainfall, and the bypass pipes couldn't drain it fast enough, when one of them
got blocked. Because there were only three pipes. One of them was closed for
routine maintenance, valve replacement, stuff like that. So then the second
one got blocked, and while we were clearing the blockage, the third one
failed, the massive water flow wrecked one of the valves. And the water
pressure exceeded the design at the dam face, and the rest you know." "So why
are you the fall guy?" "I was the design engineer. They'll blame me for the
fact that there were only three bypass pipes, and for the weakness of the
dam." "If you were the design engineer, then it was your responsibility." "I
wanted eight bypass pipes, and that was in the original design. But the bean
counters said no, we had to get within their cost estimates, and we'd have to
make do with three. See, you really only need one, but you have an extra in
case it gets blocked." "So did you explain why you wanted eight." "Yes, but
that's engineering, and all they know is costs, they couldn't see the
difference between eight smaller pipes and three big ones, and the three big
ones were a lot cheaper. And they said, well, eight is overkill, you don't
need eight, you'd need all three to go before you had a problem, and that's
right. But that's what happened. We lost all three."

She frowned down at him. "So it's the bean counters' fault." "Well, it isn't
that simple. I got put under pressure, and, well. I didn't stand up to them.
And now eighteen people are dead, and there's all that damage to property, and
I signed off on the design. I'm going to be the fall guy, and I think I
deserve it too, because if only I'd stood my ground, but they said they'd get
another chief engineer, and I've got a wife and three kids to think of, and,
well. I was weak. I should have been stronger, and I wasn't, and there's
eighteen corpses because I was weak. My responsibility, my fault." He dropped
to his knees and started sobbing into his hands.

She looked down at him, then up at Duncan. Duncan shrugged his shoulders. She
knelt down next to the crying engineer, and pulled his head to her shoulder.
She put her arms round him and tried to soothe him. "Hush, shush, you did your
best, you couldn't have known that people would get killed." "It's like
murder, I'm guilty, I deserve whatever happens to me now" "No, no. I forgive
you, honey, what's your name?" "George. George Sparford. Thank you." She
stroked his hair, and looked up at Duncan again. Duncan looked doubtful. She
pulled the crying engineer closer to her, and held him tight while he wept.
"It'll be alright. I'll make it alright." He looked up at her, hopefully.
"How? Dead is dead. Not even you can ..." "No, I can't, but, well, I can do
stuff, I'll make it all right, I promise." She stroked his hair and hugged him
to her body. "I promise, everything will be all right" Duncan crouched down
next to them. "Wendy, what are you promising?" "I don't know, Duncan. You tell
me, what can we do?" He thought for a minute. "You know, there's never just
one cockroach in the kitchen," said Duncan. "What?"

"These people build dams, big civil engineering projects like that. If they
cut corners on one, then there will be others they skimped on. And some of
those will be dangerous too. Right George?" "Damn right. All the time, we get
told we have to cut out the overdesign. You want a safety margin of 100% in a
thing like this, and if you only get 50%, then, well, things fail. You have to
assume that things don't work like they're supposed to, or that they stop
working. And when human lives are at stake, you want a big fat safety margin,
and sure it costs a lot more. But the hell with the cost, that's what you do,
that's civil engineering. Or that's what you should do." "OK, George," she
said, "you're going to help me blow the whistle on this. I'm going to blast
this company apart. Kettering Construction is about to reap the whirlwind. Are
you up for it?" "Yes," he said, "maybe some good came come out of this
disaster. I know I couldn't take them on. But you? That's a whole different
league." She laughed. "Trust me, George, they don't stand a chance." "I do
trust you, actually, I'm not sure why, even though I don't know who you are."
"I'm the Weapon, Defender of the People, George. I'm here to save the world.
And right now, there's a bunch of guys in that construction company about to
see what I look like when I'm angry." George looked up at her. "Damn, I just
saw you angry, and it's not something I want to have to ever face." "See?" she
said, "now you just leave everything to me. You go home to your wife and kids,
don't speak to anyone. Give me your details so I can contact you."

She stood up, and looked at Duncan. "Come on, Duncan. Time to get Kettering."
She put her arm round him, and leaped up into the air. "Where are they?" he
said. "Oh," she said, "I forgot to ask. Hang on ... OK, it's at Greeley, 11th
Av and 25th, um, thataway ..." and she flew off to the Northeast, Duncan by
her side. "Hey, how did you find out ... oh, I know, you just went on the net
again, didn't you!" She laughed. "Magic isn't impressive when you know how
it's done, is it?" "Wendy, I know how you do it and I'm still impressed
nevertheless." A few minutes later, they arrived at Greeley; the Kettering
building was the largest in the block, hard to miss. She landed in a grassy
area in front of it. "OK, now we do the receptionist two-step," said Duncan.
She sighed. "Maybe not. Look, Duncan, you do the receptionist bit, I'm going
to be a bit more direct. Give me five minutes start, then you ask to see the
Big Potato, whoever it is, get her to phone up to confirm you're expected."
"But I'm not." "You will be. Where will the Main Man be?" "I'd guess top
floor, corner office, the one with the best view. But wait a moment, Wendy.
Strategy meeting." "OK, what's the strategy, my Weilder?" Duncan explained to
her how he thought she should play it. When he finished, she nodded. "Sounds
good to me. OK, I'll do it that way."

He watched as she took off, curved away from the building, then looped and
dived straight through a big window in a corner office, facing the river, on
the top floor. "Direct, yup. That's my girl!" She smashed though the glass,
and found herself in a large, beautifully furnished office, all oak panels and
burnished aluminium. And one very startled looking middle-aged man sitting at
a desk the size of Texas. "What the hell? Who are you?"

She walked towards him, flinging the heavy desk aside with one hand. She
growled as she put one hand on each of the arms of his chair, and leaned
forward, trapping him in position. "Who the fuck do you think I am, the tooth
fairy?" He tried to stand up, but he bounced off her chest, and sank back into
the chair. "I," she said, "am The Weapon, Defender of the People. You ... are
toast." "You can't get away with this." "Toast, baby. Toast. I'll tell you
why." "What?" She held him down with one hand, and clenched her right fist,
showing it to him. It looked to him like a small sledgehammer. "The Arkansas
Headwater Dam," she said, "let's talk about that for a moment." "A terrible
accident, appalling." "No," she said, "it wasn't an accident." "Sabotage?
Terrorists?" "No, asshole. It was your fucking accountants. They screwed up
the design. They cut the eight planned bypass pipes to three, and now you've
got eighteen deaths and real soon, as soon as this gets out, you're going to
be up to your neck in negligence lawsuits. Asshole." "Oh." "Now, you call down
to reception, and tell them to send up your visitor. And then you're calling a
main board meeting, with only one item on the agenda." "Which is?" "How you
guys are going to avoid spending the next fifty years behind bars." He closed
his eyes. She thrust the telephone into his hands, and he called his secretary
into the office.

Wendy backed off, and hovered by the broken window staring out over the river,
her feet twelve inches from the ground, her cape billowing around her in the
breeze. The secretary looked startled for a moment, but quickly regained her
composure, and started to make the necessary phone calls. Meanwhile, the
company president came up behind Wendy. "It's a long way down," he said. "No,
chum, you ain't going that way. That's the easy way out." "I didn't mean that.
I mean fifty years inside." "You're going to clean up the mess you made, or
else." "Or else what? You'll kill me? Are you threatening me? " "Yes. With
fifty years in prison. Or whatever the jury decides you're worth."

Duncan arrived, and looked around at the shambles she'd made of the office.
"Whew. You didn't go the gentle way. What's your name, Mister?" "Scott, Larry
Scott." Scott held out a hand. Duncan looked at the hand, looked at Scott's
face. "Asshole, you just killed eighteen people." "It was an accident ..."
"Shut up, Larry," said Wendy, very quietly, "save that for the jury. I've just
been having a look round your computer systems, there's a lot of real
interesting stuff there. You business suits and your obsession with paperwork.
It's all documented." "You hacked into our computers?" "Not hacked, Larry. If
you leave stuff out in the open, don't be surprised if people passing by
happen to read it. This building is wired, the data flows are going all over
the place, you only have to look at the packets to see what's there. And I
just did." Larry looked blankly at her. Duncan spoke up. "Think of her as a
mobile computer, asshole, and if you shout your secrets into her ears, that's
your fault."

The secretary came back into the room. "Most of the board is seated, Mr Scott,
when would you like to start?" He looked at Wendy. "Right now, honey, lead the
way," she said to the secretary, "and please join us, I want someone to take
really accurate minutes of this meeting." They walked into the meeting room.

The Weapon - Genesis - part 12
By Diana the Valkyrie
The board meeting


It was the usual setup. Big polished table, jugs of ice water, little
notepads, ballpoint pens with a company logo, and six fat cats sitting in six
fat chairs. The secretary sat back from the table by the wall, and Scott took
his place at the head of the table, until Wendy picked up his chair with him
in it, and dumped it to her left. She stood at the head of the table, hovering
several inches above the ground, and look round at the faces in front of her.
Then she pounded the table with her hand, and you could feel the room shake.
"The meeting starts now."

One of the men stood up. "I object. By what right are you here? You're not
even a shareholder. Get out of this meeting." "What's your name, asshole?" she
replied. "Dave Carfax, I'm the VP of Finance here, this is none of your
fucking business, lady in the funny suit. Now bugger off."

Mistake. Big mistake. "Actually, it is my business," she said, very softly.
"Who said?" "Do you know what happens when a dam bursts?" She swept up a jug
of ice water from the table and dumped it over his head. "You get water." She
dumped a second jug over his head. "A lot of water." She dumped a third jug.
"A fuck load of water. And eighteen people get killed, and that's what makes
it my business, and the business of anyone else who cares about other people
more than they care about the fucking profits of this fucking company. Is that
clear?"

The shock of the ice water paralysed him; the shock of the attack left the
rest of the men speechless. The only sounds were the scratching of a pencil as
the secretary faithfully recorded every word.

"Now then, let's get to the one and only agenda item. How to keep you assholes
from getting fifty years in prison. Each. Because right now, you're looking at
multiple charges of manslaughter, on account of you reduced the safety margin
for this dam despite being warned what could happen."

There was silence. A long silence. "P - p - prison?" "Yeah, that's what they
do with people who break the law, hadn't you heard?" "B-b-but .." "Shut up and
listen. Here's what's going to happen next. You're going to get hit from three
directions. The first thing that will hit you, is the media shitstorm, when
the press headlines the fact that your greed led to this disaster. You'll be
tried and convicted by the press, trussed up like turkeys and hung out to dry
without any chance of defence, the press aren't interested in a fair trial,
all they want is a good story, and this one's a doozy. Then the bottom will
fall out of your share price when the negligence lawsuits start to hit you,
and you won't be able to revolve your financing, because the banks only lend
to people who don't need money, so there's a good chance that the whole
company will go down. And then the criminal charges will start to arrive,
because the criminal law doesn't move fast; the wheels of justice grind
slowly, but they grind exceedingly small, and you'll be the hamburger they
grind. Got all that so far?"

Three men nodded, two were sitting rigid and unmoving in total shock, and one
was still trying to recover from three jugs of ice water dumped on his head.

"OK, so you think that's bad? It gets worse." "How can it get worse," asked
Scott miserably, "you already have us pilloried by the press, bankrupted by
the banks and locked up for half a century." "This isn't the only project
you've done that endangers human lives." Scott shook his head, slowly. "No.
No. I'm not hearing this." "You thought there was something different about
this project? You've been doing this for years. Cut the costs, increase the
profits, share price goes up, your options go through the roof. Good for the
shareholders, great for the board, fuck the people. Well, now it caught up
with you."

"You have evidence of this, young lady?" asked the man who was still dripping
wet. She turned to regard him, and spoke more gently. "I don't need evidence,
honey. This isn't a court of law, I'm not a judge and jury. That comes later,
and yes, they'll subpoena your engineers, they'll seize your files, and your
off-site backups, all the canaries will sing their little hearts out to save
their skins, and every single skeleton in your big old cupboard will come
clanking out."

Scott spoke again. "I can't believe we got ourselves into this. And there's no
way out?" "Yes, there might be. No promises. But there just might be a way to
salvage something from this mess." "How, how" several of them asked, eagerly.
She walked round to the man she'd thrown the water at. "You OK, honey?" He
nodded. "Sorry about that, you pissed me off a little. Don't tell me to bugger
off again, OK?" "You got it," he said. "And stop calling me 'lady', you call
me The Weapon, the Defender of the People. Got that?" He nodded. "Yes,
Defender." She smiled at him, and stroked his cheek. "Good boy."

She turned to the secretary. "Getting all this?" "Yes, Defender." "OK, here's
what you do. Call it Project Repentance. You set up three teams; finance,
engineering and PR. No-one's allowed to talk to the press except the PR
people; everyone else briefs them. The task of the PR people is to understand
that the company is trying to do now, and communicate that to the press." "And
what are we trying to do?" asked Scott. "You're going to re-examine every
project you've done for the last fifty years, from a safety point of view, and
figure out the safety factor that you have in each of them. And if it isn't
high enough by the standards of current civil engineering practice, You're
going to fix the problem, at your own expense."

There was an immediate babble of voices. "We can't ... "There isn't the
resources ..." "Why should we carry the can for what other people did 50 years
ago ..." Wendy smashed her fist down on the table again, and you could see it
bounce slightly from the impact. "Shut up", she whispered, into the resulting
silence. "Redemption can only come through sincere repentance. When people see
that you're going back fifty years on this, and that even projects that met
the safety standards at that time are going to be made safer, they'll
understand that there is a real change happening at Kettering. The resources?
You'll get them. You have to. You'll sell your own personal assets if you have
to, in order to fund this. You'll sell your shares, your houses, your yachts,
your cars, your wife's fur coats, your kid's skateboards, everything. Because
by doing that, you'll demonstrate that you really are sorry for the mess.
Nothing can bring back the eighteen that died, but by heaven you can do your
best to stop it happening again!"

A couple of them nodded. "Well?" she asked. "Now we vote. Those in favour of
this action plan, raise your hands." All the hands went up, even the
secretary. "Carried unanimously," she said, smiling. "Now, Larry, you get
George Sparford here, he'll lead the engineering team. Carfax, get a finance
task force together, you're job is to squeeze the board till the pips squeak,
and get the cash together to keep this company running while Project
Repentance runs. And Larry, you'll do the PR job. The press will want to talk
about the dam disaster and other bad things, you keep them focussed on Project
Repentance, about how you're going to make up for all the bad things done by
you *and* your predecessors. You can't have some junior doing that job, not in
these circumstances, you're the guy in the hot seat, you're the front man, get
used to it." He nodded. "And what will you do?" he asked her. "Tonight, I'm
doing Chicken Provencale with aubergines and sweet potatoes. If you thought
I'm going to help you clear up your mess, think again." She moved to the door.
She turned just before she left, and smiled at them "But I will be watching
you."

Duncan shut the door behind them. She took his hand, "I know a short cut out
of here." They walked back to Scott's office, she put her arm round his waist,
and leaped out of the broken window.

"You know, Wendy, you're very pretty when you're angry." "Gee, thanks." "No, I
mean, you're pretty all the time, but you're very pretty when you're angry."
"Uh huh." "But by the bones of god, I'd hate to be the target for that, those
guys were practically pissing their pants." "One of them did, actually." "You
weren't acting, were you. That was real." "Damn right it was real, Duncan.
Telling me to bugger off!" "You'd think people would have more sense than to
dis a woman who could tear off their arms without pulling very hard." "Duncan,
you know I couldn't do a thing like that." "I know, and you know. But then, I
couldn't have predicted that move with the water jugs, that was brilliant." "I
just felt like throwing something at him. Hard. And I knew the water wouldn't
actually hurt him. Shock him, yes. But not really hurt." "Brilliant." She
smiled down at him. "You know, you're very pretty when you're angry. But
you're absolutely gorgeous when you smile."

"My strength is your strength. My power is your power. I will love you and
protect you and obey you. Until the end of time."