Elemental by Steven Savile Read Free Book Online Page A

mother of God, had been a virgin. Therefore she was a girl rather than a woman: and Christ was not of woman born. At his second coming, Macbeth decided, there would exist in the world a person capable of destroying him—an end he looked forward to with complete equanimity. But 1666 turned into 1667, and then into 1668, and the end of the world did not come. Macbeth reconciled himself to a genuinely immortal life. He discovered that immortality tasted not of glory, not even especially of life. It was a gray sort of experience, neither markedly happy nor sad. It was the life stones experience. It was the reason they were so silent and unmoved. It was the existence of the ocean itself, changeless though restless, chafing yet moveless. It was Macbeth’s existence.
    ACT V
    There was a knocking at the door.
    Nobody had knocked at his door for a decade or more. His last visitor had been the census taker, and Macbeth—who had learned this lesson from experience long before—had disposed of him swiftly rather than risk having his precious solitude disturbed. Maps marked Dunsinane as a folly; Macbeth had gone to great lengths to dig out underground
dwellings and knock down much of the upper portion, so as not to be too conspicuous from the air. What with the reforestation of pretty much the whole of Scotland following the European Act of ’57 his home was well hidden: off the ramblers trails and not listed in any land tax spreadsheets.
    So who was knocking?
    He clambered up the stairs to the main hall and pulled open the door. Outside, standing in the rain (Macbeth, sequestered in his underground laboratory, had not even realized it was raining) was a man. He was wearing the latest in bodymorph clothes, a purple plastic cape that rolled into a seam of his shirt as he stepped over the threshold, and dynstripes in his hair.
    â€œMay I come in?” he asked, politely enough.
    â€œI don’t welcome visitors,” said Macbeth.
    â€œThat’s as may be, sir,” said the man. “But I have official accreditation.” He held out a laminated badge for Macbeth’s perusal; an animated glyph of the man’s face smiled and nodded at him repeatedly from the badge. “And the legal right of entry.”
    Macbeth thought of killing him there and then, but he held back. He hadn’t talked to another human being in two years. He was curious as to what errand had brought this official individual so deep into the woods.
    As he shut the door behind him he asked, “So what is it you want?”
    â€œAre you, sir, a relation of the Macbeth family?” the man asked.
    Now this was a startling thing. The people of this part of Scotland had long, long ago forgotten Macbeth’s name and true identity. He lived, where he was not entirely forgotten, as a kind of legend; stories of an ogre who could not be killed, of a wizard with the gift of immortality. “How do you know that name?”
    â€œDatabases worldwide have been linked and cross-Web searched,” the man said in a slightly sing-song voice. “Various anomalies have been detected. It is my job—assigned me by my parent company, McDF Inc.—to investigate these. The deeds to this property have not been filed in eleven hundred years. The last listed owner was a Mr. Macbeth. I am
here to discover whether this property is still in the possession of that family, in order to register it for Poll Tax, Land Reclamation Tax, and various other government and EU duties.”
    This told Macbeth all he needed to know. This taxman would have to die or Macbeth’s life would be disturbed, and he hated disturbance. He reached this conclusion with a heavy heart. The youthful enthusiasm for slaughter had long since passed from his breast. Now, from his immortal perspective, the mayfly humans who were born, grew, and died all around him were objects rather of pity than scorn. Still, necessity overrode his compassion. If it must be done