Ash: The Lost History Part 169

"I don't understand."

A fair-haired woman in a white overall walked towards us down the track. The wind made her slit her eyes, but I could see that they were green. She had had her head shaven and st.i.tched at some time in the recent past: the visible scars of removed st.i.tches, and the fluff of her regrowing hairline were clearly visible under her cap.

"The amirs' medicine was better than ours," Asche said to me. "Why shouldn't someone else's be better than theirs?"

Death is a fuzzy-edged boundary, too.

The women glanced from me to Major Asche. "This is the boffin?"

"That's right."

The name tape on the breast of her overall read DEL GUIZ.

"You tell him where your sister is, yet?"

"Sure."

The scarecrow-tall woman turned back to me. For all the pallor of her cheeks, she was smiling. "This one flew down to Dusseldorf, yesterday. On a military flight. She had to see them."

"My sister has two children," Asche said, gravely mischievous. "Violante, and Adelize."

Asche smiled.

"Violante keeps rats. I'll go down again soon. We've got stuff to say to each other."

The woman who must be Floria del Guiz said briskly, as if I wasn't present, "Ratcliff will want to interview all of us. Clerks always do. I'll be in the med tent. Some other b.l.o.o.d.y fool decided to get out of a counter-gravity tank before it landed. That's four. Christ! n.o.body tell me soldiers are bright."

Major Asche, with demure humility, said, "I wouldn't dare."

Floria del Guiz stomped back towards the tents, with a wave that might - if a senior officer had appeared - have become a salute.

"I would have given anything," Asche said, and I saw that her fist was clenched at her side, "to have all of them here now. And G.o.dfrey. And G.o.dfrey. But death is real. It's all real."

"But for how long?"

"You haven't got it yet, have you?" Asche looked amused.

"Got what?"

"We came back," Asche said. "I thought we would. But they stayed."

At the time, I merely stared at her. It is not until now that I have developed a theory: that organic matter and organic mind are inevitably 'sucked back', if you like, into the human species-mind, into the main part of reality, away from the 'forward edge'. Because they are human, and organic And that she must -with all that computing power at her disposal - have realised this.

"'They stayed'?"

"The Wild Machines," Asche said, as if it were obvious enough for a child to have seen it.

And I saw it. The Wild Machines.

"Yes." A wind rustled; spent rain fell from the pine trees and spattered my face. I stared at the woman in combat fatigues, with the grin on her face. "I suppose I a.s.sumed that- there's no reason to a.s.sume it! No reason to suppose that the Wild Machine silicon-intelligences were destroyed when you - did what you did."

What more likely than that Lost Burgundy contains them, as well as the nature of Burgundy, within itself? Contains the presence of immense, intelligent, calculating power. If Lost Burgundy exists in an eternal moment, without time, but with duration, this does not preclude the idea that the machine-intelligences might 'still' be functioning. Linear time is not relevant where they exist.

Immense natural machine intelligences, monitoring the probability wave, keeping all possibility of miracle-working out of the Real. Their perception more vast than human; their power inorganic and endless, tapping into the fabric of the universe. Maintaining, unchanging.

"They couldn't move there themselves," Asche said. "We made a miracle and I moved all of us. All of us. Carthage too. And now they're out there -wherever - doing what Burgundy did. The Wild Machines are Burgundy now."

The wind rattled again in the trees, and became the noise of helicopter rotors. She reached for the RT set in her top pocket but didn't respond. She squinted up above the tree-tops, into the clearing blue sky.

"They knew it would happen," she said. "When I told them what I planned to do. They consented. They're machines. G.o.dfrey would say my h.e.l.l - the eternal moment - is their heaven."

The arc of her, and their, 'moment' covers five hundred years of intense scientific discovery. As a race, we have alleviated some of human suffering, while at the same time committing the grossest atrocities. Lost Burgundy, then, does not limit human choices; we are free to choose whatever we perceive of good and evil.

"Lost Carthage?" I suggested.

"A lost and golden moment," the woman said.

Above our heads, a helicopter dipped towards the clearing; and all speech became impossible until it had landed. A young man in combat fatigues jumped down and began sprinting towards us through the mud.

"Boss, they need you over at grid- is the radio down?" he interrupted himself. Long-boned, hardly more than adolescent. "Major Rodiani wants you! So does Colonel Valzacchi."

As I watched her, she gave a slow, amazed grin.

"'Colonel' Valzacchi? Hmm. I'll be right there, Tydder." As he ran back, she said, "This really isn't the time. I'll get the chopper to take you back to Brussels. I'll talk to you there, soon."

"What happens to you," I said, "now?"

"Anything." She smiles across at the idling rotors of the camouflage-painted helicopter, and shakes her head, with all the energy of youth; as if amazed that anybody could be so obtuse. "I live my life, that's what happens. I'm not even twenty. I can do anything. You keep an eye open for me, Doctor Ratcliff. I'll make five-star general yet! And I suppose I'll have to do some of this b.l.o.o.d.y political stuff. After all - now, I know how."

She gave me her hand to shake and I took it. Her flesh was warm. Any thought I might have had that she would retire - or be persuaded to join Project Carthage - was revealed as insubstantial, unreal. Cruelty and abuse do not die, although they may be overcome; she is now what she always will be, a woman who kills other people. Her loyalty, such as it is, is to her own. However many that may come to include.

As I left, she said, "I'm told we're going back out to the Chinese border soon. As a peace-keeping force. In some ways, that's worse than war! But on the whole-" A long, level look from that scarred face. "It's probably better. Don't you think?"

That was three months ago.

While I have been engaged in the collation of the Third Edition text with the chronological doc.u.mentation of 2000 and 2001, and in the writing of this Afterword, Major Asche briefly visited the Project headquarters in California. On her way out, she suggested to me that we might require an alteration to our unofficial Latin motto.

It reads, now, Non delenda est Carthago.

Carthage must not be destroyed.

Pierce Ratcliff-Napier-Grant Brussels, 2009 * * *

Acknowledgements I am indebted to Anna Monkton (nee Longman) for her guidance in presenting our editorial correspondence. At time of publication, she is about to present us with a first grandchild - or in my case, step-grandchild - which, however, she and my wife, Isobel, refuse to let me call after our 'scruffy mercenary', Ash.

But I have hopes of persuading them.

FootNotes * * *

Introduction: 1 [Not entirely, as we shall see.]

Prologue: 1 - [Psalms 57: 4]

2 - [A closed-face helmet.]

3 - [ A wide-brimmed steel helmet, identical in shape to the British 'Tommy's' helmet of the 1914-1918 World War.]

4 - [Armour pieces for the chin and lower face, made of either articulated or solid plate, and often lined with velvet or other cloth; therefore hot to wear.]

5 - [ Internal evidence therefore suggests this is not one of the Company of the Griffin-in-Gold's contracts with the Burgundian Dukes. Therefore, the battle can be neither Dinant (19-25 August 1466) nor Brustem (28 October 1467). I theorise that this takes place in Italy, that it is Molinella (1467), a battle in the war between Duke Francisco Sforza of Milan, and the Serenissima or Most Serene Republic of Venice under the condottiere Bartolomeo Colleoni. Colleoni has been falsely credited with the first use of field guns in battle.

The battle is obscure, noted only because of a cynical comment which Niccolo Machiavelli later wrote about the 'bloodless wars' of the Italian professional contract soldiers: that only one man died in the battle of Molinella, and that was from falling off his horse. Better sources suggest a more accurate a.s.sessment would be around six hundred dead.

The Winchester Codex was written around ad 1495, some twenty-eight years after this date, and nineteen years after the main body of the 'Ash' texts (which cover the years ad 1476-1477). Some details of the battle depicted here greatly resemble the last conflict in the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of Stoke (1487). Possibly this biography was written by an English soldier who had become a monk at Winchester, and wrote about what he experienced in the English midlands, at Stoke, rather than about Molinella itself.]

Part One: 0 - ['The G.o.ddess Fortune is the Empress of this world.']

1 - [Open-faced helmet; in this case with a visor which can be raised or lowered, for visibility or protection.]

2 - [ It is worth noting, that the Angelotti ma.n.u.script's term for the company's main battle standard - Or, a lion pa.s.sant guardant azure (a blue lion; pacing to the viewer's left and looking out, one paw raised) - is unusual. Traditionally in heraldry, the lion pa.s.sant guardant is referred to not as a lion, but as a leopard.

I think it is clear that Ash chooses to refer to hers as a lion for religious reasons.

The standard reproduced in the Angelotti ms, a tapering, swallow-tailed banner perhaps six feet long, is charged with the commander's badge, and one version of the company battle-cry - 'Frango regna!': 'I shatter kingdoms!' - as well as employers' badges from their various German, Italian, English and Swiss campaigns.

Ash's own personal (rectangular) banner, bearing her badge, is referred to as Or, a lion azure affronte, (a blue lion's head, face-on, on a gold field); which seems to be a lion's head cabossed (that is, with no neck or other part of the beast featured). The more correct term would be Or, a leopard's face azure. It is clear here that the company livery is gold, and that her men wear, as the badge, the lion pa.s.sant guardant azure. This combination of blue and gold is especially characteristic of eastern France and Lorraine, and more generally of France, England, Italy, and Scandinavia, in contrast to black and gold, which is more characteristic of the German lands. I can find no reference to 'Or, a leopard's face azure' nor 'Or, a leopard azure' being a.s.sociated with any well-known individual other than Ash.]

3 - [Cavalry lance pennants.]

4 - [ A reference from 'Fraxinus', to an as-yet-unidentified mediaeval myth-cycle or legend. It is also mentioned in the del Guiz text, but absent from the Angelotti and 'Pseudo-G.o.dfrey' ma.n.u.scripts.]

5 - [ A tourney is an organised killing affray. A tournament is an organised killing affray with blunt weapons.]

6 - [ Rosbif or 'roast-beef': continental nickname at this time for an Englishman, since they were popularly supposed to eat nothing else.]

7 - [ Uncertain: possibly glanders.]

8 - [ Water was usually drunk at this period only when tiny amounts of alcohol were included, to prevent water-borne infections.]

9 - [ In the original, this is a completely untranslatable joke based on a pun between two words in German and an obscure, no longer extant, Flemish dialect. I have therefore subst.i.tuted something to give the flavour of it. 'Deus vult' means 'G.o.d willing'.]

10 - [ This account is accurate, with one exception. The skirmish at the siege of Neuss took place, not in 1476, but on 16 June 1475. However, records often pick up an apparent error of a year either way. Under the Julian calendar, in different parts of Europe, the New Year is variously dated as beginning at Easter, on Lady Day (25 March), and Christmas Day (25 December); and post ad 1583, the Gregorian calendar backdates the begining of those years to 1 January.

I can do no better than refer the reader to Charles Mallory Maximillian's comment in the 'Preface and Notes' to the first edition (1890): 'The Germanic Life of Ash narrates many startling and, one might think, implausible events. It is, however, verifiable that all these particular exploits of the woman Ash are well-attested to, by a great variety of other trustworthy historical sources.

'One should forgive, therefore, this doc.u.ment's mistake in the mere dating of the events contained therein.']

11 - [ Fifteenth-century man-portable matchlock firearm.]

12 - [ Although it is a later translation, some 135 years after the 'Ash' texts, I have chosen the King James Authorised Version of the Bible (1611) as more accessible to the modern reader.]

13 - [ These improbable vehicles bear some resemblance to the mobile horse-drawn 'war-wagons' used by the Hussites in the 1420s, some fifty years earlier than this. The Eastern European fighters appear to have used them as mobile gun-platforms. However, the del Guiz 'iron-sided' wagons are a mere impossibility - even if constructed, they would have been so heavy that no conceivable team of horses could have moved them.]

14 - [ Padua in Italy was at this time a famous centre attended by medical students from all over Europe.]

15 - [ Romans 12: 14.]

16 - [ This text often gives the hour of the day by the monastic system: Nones is the sixth office or service of the day, taking place at 3 p.m. The monastic hours are: Matins: midnight (but sometimes held with) Lauds: 3 a.m.

Prime: sunrise (nominally 6 a.m.) Terce: 9 a.m.

s.e.xt:: noon Nones: 3 p.m.

Vespers: 6 p.m.

Compline: 9 p.m.

(The unwary reader should note this is further complicated by the mediaeval habit of dividing the hours of dark and the hours of daylight into twelve-hour segments, which means, that in winter an 'hour' of darkness is longer than an 'hour' of daylight, and conversely for the summer.)]

17 - [ Hericourt was a small Burgundian frontier castle, put under siege by the Swiss; their campaign ended with a battle, on 13 November 1474.]

18 - [ On 24 December 1474, eighteen captured Italian mercenaries who had been fighting for the Burgundians against the Swiss were burned alive, at Basle. It was Christmas Eve.]

19 - [Monastic hours: 9 p.m.]

20 - [ The Gutenberg press edition of the del Guiz Life gives the date as 27 June 1476; the siege of Neuss ended, of course, on 27 June 1475. However, all other contemporary sources give the date of the wedding ceremony, four days later, as,l July 1476.]

21 - [ Simeon Salus, died c.590, is the saint a.s.sociated with social outcasts, especially harlots. His feast-day is celebrated on 1 July.]

22 - [ Psalms 68: 30.]

23 - [ No longer extant, but see similar figure at Freiburg-im-Breisgau, sculpted c. AD 1280.]

24 - [ A direct translation of the original German. No such altarpiece is extant in Cologne.]

25 - [ Latin: a 'mannish' or 'man-aping' woman.]

26 - [ Text uncertain here. Charles Mallory Maximillian has 'Visigoth', the 'n.o.ble Goths'. Although it is couched in terms of mediaeval legend, I believe the mention of 'Visigoths' to have aspects we would do well to consider.]

27 - [ I prefer this term, with its suggestion of the organic, to Vaughan Davies's 'robot', or Charles Mallory Maximillian's 'clay man'.

This quasi-supernatural appearance is, of course, one of the mythical accretions which attach themselves to histories such as Ash's; and should not be taken seriously, except in so far as it reflects the mediaeval psychological preoccupation with a lost Roman 'Age of Gold'.]

28 - [ Heavily armoured lancers, with either both horse and rider armoured in overlapping scale or lamellar armour, or the horse unarmoured. This Middle Eastern form of cavalry survives throughout the mediaeval period, notably in Byzantium. (From context, I a.s.sume this not to refer to the Greek and Roman galleys also known as cataphracts.)]

29 - [ According to conventional histories, the Germanic Visigothic tribes did not settle in North Africa. Rather the reverse - with the Muslim Arab invasion of Visigothic Spain, in AD 711.]