The Armageddon Blues

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The Armageddon Blues
Daniel Keys Moran

This is a work of fiction. None of the characters in it are real people and any resemblance to anybody, living or dead, is a coincidence.
It is the author's intention that this work should be freely downloadable, copyable, and shareable in electronic format. It may not be reproduced, shared, or transmitted for a fee by any party to whom the author has not contractually granted permission. The author retains all other rights.?
Copyright (c) 1987 by Daniel Keys Moran
All Rights Reserved

Dedicated to
The first edition of this book, many years ago, was dedicated to my sister Kari, for couch and hamburgers during hard times.
This edition is dedicated to Alex and Andrea and Bram and Richard and Connor. For helping me get out of bed every morning.
Furniture in both dedications. I wouldn't attach any significance to that, really.

The Armageddon Blues
A Tale of the Great Wheel
A?note from the author:? The following is compiled from a number of sources, including humans. It may therefore be inaccurate in a number of details. In fact, considering the humans involved, I will go farther than that.
What follows is not accurate.
It is not truth.
It is ... elegant.
I am a computer.
All The Time In The World?
Consider the explosion of a thermonuclear weapon.
From an insignificant collection of radioactives and supporting hardware, the bomb expands within seconds to a thundering mushroom cloud of stunning size and power.
(Psychedelic mushrooms, yeah, yeah, yeah.)
Hold this image most clearly in mind, please--small metal egg of the technological demons to the fires of a somewhat less sophisticated era's hell; flash. Do you see it, do you have the image, do you understand?
To comprehend the essence of the personality of Georges Mordreaux, take this image, this process, and reverse it.
(Add the sound of Japanese wind chimes. Georges Mordreaux is a happy man.
(Naturally.)
A brief aside: It is the opinion of the author that the sound of an atomic bomb exploding in reverse is squilchgmp!
The author is willing to concede that he could be wrong, but adds that, until such time as he is proven incorrect, he will continue to hold this opinion.
Dateline 2052 Gregorian.
Marchand the Hunter went into the deep Burns after her daughter.
The child was five Colds, and she knew no better; the nighttime glow of the Burn beckoned, and she went. The Clan of Hammel, migrating through the Big Desert by the Waters, pressed on. It was death to enter the Burns. They knew they would never see Marchand again.
Three days later Marchand d'Loria y ken Hammel staggered out of the darkness, past the Clan's sentries and into the ring of camp fires. Dilann, her daughter, was clutched in her arms.
Marchand died the next morning.
To the awe of the entire Clan, Marchand's daughter survived. Before Dilann's sixth birthday, the Clan, or what was left of the Clan after the desert trek, had reached the forests by the Big Waters of the North Coast.
What was left of the Clan prospered. Dilann became known as Dilann d'Arsennette, the lady of the fires.
Only one of Dilann's three children survived to adulthood. All three of Dilann's children were mutant, as was to be expected of the offspring of one who had survived the banked fires of Armageddon.
The child who lived was a girl, Rhia, tall and fair and strong.
Her eyes were bright silver.
Dilann's grandchildren, every one, had silver eyes.
Dateline 1917 Gregorian.
Verdun, France: The Western Front.
When Georges was a younger man--not a young man, no, but younger--the world had gotten together for a while and declared a social event called the Great War, the War to End All Wars, and later, World War One. (Rumors to the contrary, there was no American aviator named Snoopy, famed for his duels with the Red Baron. That all came later.)
Georges Mordreaux, through some bad timing on his part and the jealousy of the husband of a wife, found himself in the middle of this silly conflict, yes sir.
What should have been his last thought, as the German soldier came up out of the rain-soaked trench, bayonet in hand, was that's a muddy bayonet, as though it could possibly make any difference whether he was killed with a clean bayonet or a dirty one. (Georges was a perfectionist of sorts; even when it was in style, some years in his future, he refused to drink his milk out of a dirty glass.)
Georges came to some hours later, so the overhead sun, peeking cautiously through gray clouds, informed him. He was being dragged away from the front. All around he saw the rest of the French army, retreating methodically and with great haste. Georges' corporal, Henri, who was nineteen and who, Georges later heard, became a hero Taking A Hill that nobody gave a damn about anyway, saw that Georges' eyes were open, and motioned to the soldier holding Georges' right arm to