Shatterday (39 page)

And behind it came four snapping things that tore chunks from one another as they gibbered toward the hole in the air. And then came a slab of wood with human hands growing all over its surface, and it scuttled along on the bands. There were others, seen only dimly in the darkness, and seen at all only because they gave off their own moist, green light.

The children screamed and some of them cried, and all of them tried to get away, to become small and hide in the corner, and the paladin was speaking to them and even through the terrible noises they could hear his voice saying, "When you see the spiracle begin to form, you will know it is starting, that these things and others will be trying to get through. You will stop them. Do you know how you will stop them?"

The children could not answer, would not; screamed. Only Alan managed to husk out a frightened, "Howwwww …?" The paladin opened his eyes suddenly, looked at Alan and said in that odd voice that needed no movement of mouth to be formed, "Do this":

Together—the old paladin helped the child—they turned their eyes inward. Rushed along a sparkling silver thread, Alan felt the old paladin urging bursts of yellow light from the central fire deep inside him, out along feeders branching off the central silver thread. Each time the yellow light raced out it found a reservoir of pulsing energy; and it came hurtling back to the source purified and enlarged with power. Along and down the silver thread they raced together, the old one keeping the child in touch with the coruscating yellow power source, building it, shaping it, narrowing it into a lance of yellow light that was incredibly dense and potent. When it seemed Alan could contain no more of the yellow power, when he felt nausea bubbling up from below, far below the silver thread, the paladin
revolved
him. He (no, it wasn't like that)
turned
him, and across the scent of almonds Alan saw a gray mist. Together they
flattened
the yellow power and then the paladin
smoothed
it. The power went extruding across the sound of tin on concrete and the scent of almonds, went slicing straightaway like the horizon seen through an eye-slit. It struck against the gray mist and there was a whirling sound, as of demon winds jammed into a sea-bottle. It went on for a long time and Alan felt ill, felt the yellow power thickening, felt it growing coarse and impure. The old one was with him. He helped Alan keep the yellow power isinglass-thin and irradicable. Alan trembled like a machine shaking itself to pieces. He could not feel his body; he existed only within his own mind; trapped on that endless plain with the horizon-line of yellow power and the gray mist and the thrashing killing winds. Then the yellow power cut the gray mist, suddenly, and it hurtled through into the beyond-mist-place and was gone, and the winds died, and the old paladin drew the child back back back into his body.

Alan slammed back inside himself, his eyes opened and he pitched over on his side, emptying his bladder, his bowels and his stomach—drenching himself and the wall beside him. His eyes rolled up in his head. He went limp as death and fainted, off off off …

The old paladin sent the other seven children to the primary sensitivity sections and took Alan Pryor for advanced work. Alan was already sensitive and potent.

•

This is what the old paladins taught him:

The crazing in the air was a tearing of the fabric of time. The darkness beyond the orange spiderweb was the future. Earth's future … how far ahead no one knew. Something terrible had happened up there. No one knew what it was, nor how far ahead the disaster lay. It had changed those who lived ahead up there. Now they wanted to escape. The disaster had done something to the interface between the present and the future. Frequently, without warning, those ahead up there were able to force entrance. At such times, the paladins brought their powers into play. The nature of the power was never explicated. It could never be explained because it was a random talent. It was born in rare children but some things had to be done to them before they could exercise the full potency of the power. They stood between the present and the future; against those things that might be human but no one cared to find out. There was no doubt that if they came through, they would destroy the human race and take this Earth for themselves.

There were winds, and there were scorched places, and people died where they burst through; but always the paladins unleashed their power and the rift in time was sealed again and the humping, lurching, odorous creatures from the other side were sucked back into their own present and the Earth was safe again. For a while.

•

He was assigned to a ready station in Brazil. His apartment was in one of the old Bauhaus buildings fronting Leblon. He went where he chose and he was honored wherever he went. He was a paladin. The ivory and blue uniform was a badge of respect. He swam in the totally unbelievable blue of the ocean off Copacabana Beach and he stood every evening on the balcony of his apartment as the ten-minute torrential downpour eased the killing mugginess of the rain forest humidity. He attended brushup sessions in shock focus rooms like the one on the Island and he waited for his time.

One night, when he was twenty-seven years old, he attended a reception for the international crowd that had come to Rio for the film festival. When he came up the dramatically winding staircase in the American Embassy the band stopped playing and the enormous crowd turned and applauded him. He smiled shyly and accepted the individual greetings of the handsome men in their summer-weight dinner jackets and the extraordinary women in their diaphanous gowns. Then he sought a place along one wall where he could stand silently, watching them as they danced and laughed. He was alone; he was always alone; he had grown used to it.

Half of the reception story of the embassy had been wallslatted, converting it into an art gallery; it held depth-screens on which reproductions of the paintings of American artists were projected: Rothko and Homer and Cassatt and Eakins and Bellows and Wyeth and Grooms. He stood and marveled. He had no national heritage, had never been exposed to such wonders.

After a time, he became aware of a woman watching him.

He did not stare at her, but turned slightly so he could watch her reflection in one of the polished stainless steel helix sculptures of David Lee Brown.

She was very tall and had shaved herself completely in the current fashion. Her pale skin seemed to be covered with a faint, delicate film of dew. He thought:
beautiful, I've never seen a woman as beautiful
. He remembered; the sound of a celeste, the sound of a toy piano. From long ago, before the Island.

She moved, and he turned with her movement to follow her image in the stainless steel; she slipped off the reflective surface; and when be came around to look directly at the crowded room, to find her again, she was standing too near, and she was watching him. Her expression was one of concern. He had had women, but had never approached one socially. He was about to do it, to brave it, when the spiracle began to form in the air just in front of the Louis Comfort Tiffany chandelier. One of the waiters saw it first (Alan saw it
first
) and threw his silver salver of canapes to the polished onyx floor, shouted, pointed, and ran down the winding staircase.

Then others saw the fissure widening in the air, the charred orange lips of it distending in the air, a faint rushing of demon winds already ruffling their hair. They began to scream and to surge toward the staircase.

Had he not been staring directly at her, he would not have been aware of her part in it.

Something like the rooted trunk of a tree began to slip through the spiracle aperture, its fibrous rhizomes writhing through the spider-web threads that dangled from the yawning lips of the fissure. Droplets of moisture fell from the tendrils and where they struck the onyx floor bubbled and burned.

Alan gathered the yellow light from the wells deep inside him and, realizing the crowd would quickly shove itself over the staircase railings, knew he had only moments to seal the spiracle. He closed his eyes, clenched his fists and hurled a blast of yellow power out along the sparkling silver thread. It struck the vegetable horror emerging from the fissure and penetrated each tiniest fiber of rootling. It surged up the taproot and entered the trunk, blasting the core of life within. Then the yellow power spread outward, lapping against the sides of the spiracle. The opening began to shrink; it drew in on itself as though strings were tightening, pulling it closed like the month of a chamois pouch. Alan drew a deep breath, clenched his teeth and speared one last potent measure of yellow power at the spiracle. It withered, sucked back in on itself, pulled the last trailing rhizome back through the spiderweb, and then was gone.

He felt himself sliding down against the wall. He had fought off an attack yesterday, in one of the
favelas
high on the mountain overlooking the Lagoa Rodrigo de Frietas. There among the
barracos,
the tin-sided hovels, he had beat back an assault of slitted reptilian eyes that had surged out of the infernal darkness behind the orange spiderweb. And again tonight, yet another encroachment. They
never
came this close together. Was it an indication that some kind of tolerance had been built up? That it would take more frequent and stronger retaliation to beat back the shock-focus attacks? He slid down and sat with his back to the wall, feeling sick to his stomach. He never really came away from an attack unscathed: his brain felt scoured, raw, bleeding.

The crowd of silken cosmopolites had paused on the edge of riot: there was a paladin among them. And no paladin had ever failed to save them. They had paused and watched in awe and terror as this slight young man had beat back the demons. Now they crowded around him, their hands reaching down to help him.

Alan gestured them away. He sought her face in the crowd and through a momentary shift in bodies saw her heading for the staircase. He motioned in her direction and managed to gasp a command. "Stop that woman … the silver gown …
yes, her
!" And the crowd closed in across the mouth of the staircase, halting her flight. She turned and stared at him. Then she came through the crowd, her silver gown whispering against her moist skin, and she helped him to his feet.

And together they passed through the crowd of dilettanti and descended the memorable staircase.

•

R-4o in Bin 375.
R-41 in Bin 376.
R-42 in Bin 401.

They are so few. Never enough. But always a few to stand in the face of horror, to place their fragile bodies on the line for the rest of us. How they came to be born among us, these sanctified mutations, our children of wonder, perhaps we'll never understand. But they came when we needed them, and though they die for us, they do not die unmourned. We consecrate our lives, our world, our future, to the holy memory of men and women like Alan Pryor. Paladins … guardians of the human race.

QQ-42 in Bin 119.

•

She bathed him and he slept. She
thought
he slept, but he only rested with his eyes closed. He watched her move around the conapt's misty interior, pruning and watering her bushes; watched her through slitted eyes. And when he was certain she was not in contact with anyone else, he sat up.

Her back was to him. She was waxing the leaves of an
Alocacia
amazonica.
He sat up, naked in the misty pool of warm water, and he said, "You caused it."

She did not turn. Her movements were precise and graceful. "I don't know what you mean," she said. But he knew she had caused it, and he said, "Yes, you do."

The mist settled on her hairless body and sparkled like frost. She ceased her activity and turned to him.

"How could you do that?" He heard his voice; it sounded immature and bewildered.

She sighed and shook her head very faintly, as though what he was saying was infinitely saddening to her.

Then the old paladin emerged from the mist and the shadows where he had been waiting, silently hoping this most sensitive of the sensitive children had not stumbled on the truth through the ineptitude of a judas on her first time out, knowing it was a futile hope, and prepared to do what had to be done. He was a very old paladin, who had been promised his freedom when he had prepared this woman to take over for him, and he was both furious at her misjudgment and desolate that his rest was that much further denied him.

He stepped out of the shadows, slaughtered her with a thought, and turned to the young paladin in the mist pool.

Alan Pryor looked into his face and saw what awaited him. He held up a hand. "At least let me understand why!"

The old paladin sighed. Why not.

"There are no attacks. It's all contrived."

"No, that isn't so. I—I feel the pain … I see the darkness coming through, the things, the spiracle …"

He shook his head. "All contrived. By sensitives like her, and me. We buy our lives. Judas sensitives. To keep you and others like you busy, for a cause. So we don't breed. So we don't multiply and take over. The ones who don't have the power, the nonsensitives, they knew from the first that we were the next step. They wouldn't let go; they'll
never
let go. So they contrived it all."

Alan made a sudden lurch toward the edge of the mist pool. The old paladin burned him out; there was a wisp of dark, thin smoke from the ash-filled sockets that had been Alan Pryor's eyes; and the old paladin sighed once more before he began cataloging the parts of Alan Pryor's body that could be recycled in expectation of the next child born with the power.

•

In that lonely place where Alan Pryor gave his life, there were no observers. The attack came in an isolated, empty place where he was burned defending us. Now we lay his body to rest, with honor, swearing that he did not go unmourned. With honor, to your final rest, Alan Pryor. Humanity will not forget.

C-64 in Bin 487.

"There are no rules.
Those who are in power make up the rules.
So those out of favor are bound to break them."

—JOSÉ BER GELBARD