Really, I mean it. Why don’t you just do it?
He knew what Perlo was talking about, and he was vaguely resentful that the other man thought he had a right to make such a suggestion. It wasn’t up to him. He was dead, a ghost. What did he know?
But then he saw Abramson nodding in agreement. Abramson, for whom he had more respect, thought Perlo was right!
Wills stared at them for a moment and then turned back to the console, studying the blinking lights and the bright empty screens as if they had something to tell him. He thought about it for a long time, and the prospect became a faint buzzing in his brain that teased at him with feathery touches, causing him to itch all over.
Why not? He could launch just one, see what happened. Just one.
What difference could it possibly make?
Once, not that long ago, such an act would have been unthinkable. But he had become increasingly convinced that no one deserved to live once he was gone. After all, what had they done to help look after things? He had seen what was out there, and it wasn’t human. Or not human enough to matter.
Even so, he still required a better reason than that. He had that much discipline left in him.
You launch one, you might attract attention. Someone might come for you, get you out.
Perlo again. He glared over his shoulder at the other man, wanting him to mind his own business. The command center was his responsibility. The missiles were in his care. No one had the right to tell him what to do with them. Certainly not a ghost.
But Perlo did have a point. If there were still someone out there with the right training, they might be able to come for him. It was possible, after all. He couldn’t see everywhere. There might be someone left.
The faces of his wife and boys stared out at him from the framed picture on the shelf in front of him. He had abandoned them. He had left them to die. He could see it in their eyes. They knew.
He sat there for a long time, staring at nothing. He forgot about Perlo and Abramson. He forgot about everything but his dead family and his lost life. He began to cry softly.
“What the hell?” he whispered.
Impulsively he pulled out the red keys and inserted them into the locks. He leaned forward to allow for the retinal scan, waited for the clearance authorization to kick in, and turned the keys. The panel concealing the launch switches slid back. He heard the locks to the switches releasing, one after the other. And then the lights above the switches turned amber and everything was activated.
Just one.
He studied the switches intently, trying to decide which. There was a book with codes designating targets and launch sites, but he didn’t know where that was anymore. He wasn’t entirely sure he remembered the codes, in any case. Five years was a long time to remember something you didn’t ever use.
Abramson and Perlo were standing at his back, watching him. Anderson was there, too, come to join them. Maybe it was time, he thought. Maybe they knew. He studied the switches some more.
Finally, he flipped one.
The amber light turned green, blinking furiously. The missile was launched.
He waited for a response—any response—but there was none forthcoming. Not from the console, not from the screens, not from those watching, not even from his own emotional center. It was as if nothing had happened.
Because, he thought, nothing had. A missile was launched, a target was obliterated, and nothing was changed. Nothing would ever change again because there was nothing left.
He shook his head in despair. He was just so tired of it all, so sick and tired. None of it made any difference, did it? What was the point of anything that he did or didn’t do? He was just passing time until it ran out and he died.
He was just waiting for the inevitable.
Perlo’s soft whisper brushed his ear. Try another.
He was surprised to discover that he liked the idea. He liked it a lot.
Why not? Matter of fact, why just one?
He flipped them all.
THE BOY WHO WAS THE GYPSY MORPH slept within the mists, encapsulated and sheltered in the way of the storybook princesses of old. He had no need of food or drink, and the passing of time meant nothing to him. Still, he was neither comatose nor unaware. Though he slept, he was hard at work fulfilling his destiny.
In a dream-like existence, that part of him that had always been a thing of wild magic was reaching beyond his human form and its limited abilities to complete the task of strengthening the barrier he had created to protect those who depended on him for their safety. The wild magic flew through the mists, an invisible presence, and everywhere it touched it left a part of itself in reserve. The mists must last a long time, it knew, and so they must have durability and resilience. No stress or strain, no matter how massive, must be allowed to break them down.
When the bombs exploded and the shock waves struck, the wall was ready. When the winds blew and the fallout began, the walls held firm. When the nuclear winter settled down across cities and plains, engulfing entire countries and in some cases whole continents, the wall kept it out. It was made of the same wild magic that creates a gypsy morph, magic rare and unfathomable, magic that comes along only now and then to do something that has never been seen before.
The King of the Silver River had understood its potential, had housed it when it had taken the boy’s form, had cared for and nurtured it, had released it back into the world when there was no other choice, and then waited to see what would happen. No one could ever know for sure how it would respond, not even him. Not even the Word could shape wild magic. It took its own form, as it had done since the beginning of time. It served its own purpose.
Time after time it circled the mountains that cradled the valley, infusing itself within the guardian mists, bleeding out of the boy who slept, and becoming what it must. The wild magic would endure until its time was finished, and then it would go back into the ether and wait until one day it would be born again into the world. The mists thickened and strengthened, and the madness and destruction of civilization’s collapse were locked outside the valley in which the survivors of the caravan were beginning their new lives.
When it was all used up, drained away entirely, and all that remained of the boy was flesh and blood and bone, the boy awoke. No longer a gypsy morph, the wild magic no longer a part of him, he stood within the mists and remembered that his life was something more than what the wild magic had demanded of him. There was a residue, a leaving. That part of him that was human had loved a girl and fathered a child. That part of him had lived among other children, who had been his friends and been left behind when he had come into the mountains and created the wall of mist.
He wanted to go back to them. He wanted to go home.
So the boy Hawk, who was a man now, a man whose mortal coil was no different from that of any other, walked out of the mists into the valley, alive and well and whole, and went in search of his life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TERRY BROOKS is the New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty-five books, including the Genesis of Shannara novels Armageddon’s Children and The Elves of Cintra; The Sword of Shannara; the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy: Ilse Witch, Antrax, and Morgawr; the High Druid of Shannara trilogy: Jarka Ruus, Tanequil, and Straken; the nonfiction book Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life; and the novel based upon the screenplay and story by George Lucas, Star Wars®: Episode I The Phantom Menace.™ His novels Running with the Demon and A Knight of the Word were selected by the Rocky Mountain News as two of the best science fiction/fantasy novels of the twentieth century. The author was a practicing attorney for many years but now writes full-time. He lives with his wife, Judine, in the Pacific Northwest.
www.shannara.com
Terrybrooks.net
BY TERRY BROOKS
SHANNARA
First King of Shannara
The Sword of Shannara
The Elfstones of Shannara
The Wishsong of Shannara
THE HERITAGE OF SHANNARA
The Scions of Shannara
The Druid of Shannara
The Elf Queen of Shannara
The Talismans of Shannara
THE VOYAGE OF THE JERLE SHANNARA
Ilse Witch
Antrax
Morgawr
HIGH DRUID OF SHANNARA
Jarka Ruus
Tanequil
Straken
GENESIS OF SHANNARA
Armageddon’s Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
The World of Shannara
THE MAGIC KINGDOM OF LANDOVER
Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold!
The Black Unicorn
Wizard at Large
The Tangle Box
Witches’ Brew
THE WORD AND THE VOID
Running with the Demon
A Knight of the Word
Angel Fire East
Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life
The Gypsy Morph is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Terry Brooks
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-50955-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brooks, Terry.
The gypsy morph / Terry Brooks.
p. cm.—(The genesis of Shannara)
1. Shannara (Imaginary place)—Fiction. 2. Elves—Fiction.
I. Title. II. Series.
PS3552.R6596G97 2008
813’.54—dc22
2008016680
www.delreybooks.com
v1.0
Terry Brooks, The Gypsy Morph
(Series: # )
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