The time passed. He sat at the big desk and pretended to grade assignments. The assignments were real, and he kept them in front of him and remembered to turn a page now and again, but the words were unintelligible. The printed or handwritten letters had developed lives of their own; they bobbled over the paper like loose balloons.
The urge to put his head down and sleep was powerfully strong, and by the end of his second class he was afraid he would simply nod off—his head was inclining when the bell rang. Students shuffled out, some looking at him oddly. Shelda Burmeister, a studious girl in high-powered corrective lenses and a torn turquoise sweater, paused at his desk until the others were gone. “Mr. Graham?”
“Yes?” He swiveled the weighty beam of his attention toward her. “What is it, Shelda?”
“I think you cut yourself.” She nodded at the desktop. He looked down. Blood had traveled down his left arm and pooled just beyond the cuff of his coat. About a tablespoon, he thought. “I guess I did,” he said. “I mean, cut myself. Thank you, Shelda.”
“Will you be all right?”
“Yes. Go on. I’m fine.”
She left. He stood up. More blood trickled down the wounded arm. Now he was conscious of the distasteful warmth of it. He held the cuff closed and moved to the door. Maybe he could clean up in the staff men’s room, change the bandage…
The door opened before he reached it and Linneth Stone stepped into the classroom. She was fresh and impossibly radiant in a white blouse, gray skirt. He looked at her with some confusion.
“Dex? I know we didn’t have an appointment. But the afternoon was free and I thought—Dex? My God, what happened?”
She caught him as he fell and lowered him to the floor. There was blood on the blouse. He meant to apologize. I’m sorry, he wanted to say. But Linneth, the classroom, the school, all vanished into a sudden night.
Part Two
The past gives birth to the present.
According to the laws of thermodynamics, nothing dies; only form changes. We reenact our evolution in the womb. As a species, our history is engraved in every cell.
But evolution can only operate under the dicta of natural law—the evolution of the universe as much as the evolution of life. In the first nanosecond of the primordial singularity, everything that now exists became an implication needing only time to achieve embodiment. The early universe contained human consciousness the way an acorn contains an oak.
The Gnostics speak of the Protennoia: Mind as the original substance of the world; a Protennoia derived from an Uncreated God, aggenetos (un-generated) and androgynous.
Humanity as a fractal subset of Mind in an imperfect Pleroma. Our divine spark, our apospasma theion, an ember of the Big Bang. Consciousness = the quantum mechanics of the archaic universe erupting into cold matter through the medium of humanity.
I think we are the lever by which something unspeakably ancient moves the world.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Coming back to the capital, even for a week, was a restorative for Symeon Demarch. No matter what happened here—and he expected nothing good from his scheduled meeting with Bisonette—he would have time to draw at least a few unfettered breaths.
He rode a truck to Fort LeDuc, where a ponderous air transport waited on the military runway. The airplane had been outfitted with a padded wooden bench along its steel inner wall, an instant nuisance to Demarch’s spine, and the four smoky engines with their immense blades rattled the fuselage and deafened the passengers. The most reliable air transportation had gone to the western front months ago. But Demarch forgot his discomfort as soon as the vehicle lifted above a plain of cloud and wheeled away from the setting sun. He was going home.
He let his attention focus on the circular window opposite him and his thoughts drift away. Except when the plane banked into a turn there was only the sky to see, a winter blue turning to ink at the apex.
The electrical heating labored and Demarch turned up the collar of his veston.
It was altogether dark when the aircraft circled down to the capital. The city was invisible except for its lights, but Demarch’s spirits were buoyed by the sight. All that grid of electricity was familiar territory. Parts of it he knew by heart. He picked out the stone pavilions of the Bureau Centrality as the plane lost altitude, a few windows shining in the hierarchs’ buildings and watch lanterns burning in the courtyards. Then a landing field rose to meet the wheels.
He shuffled out of the aircraft with the other passengers, a few enlisted men who watched him guardedly as he crossed the tarmac to a waiting car. The Bureau had sent him a vehicle and driver. The driver spoke no English and his French was deeply accented. A Haitian, Demarch supposed. A number of Haitians had lately been imported to fill menial jobs emptied by conscription.
“Neige,” the driver said. “Bientot, je pense.” Snow soon. No doubt, Demarch told him, and let the conversation languish. He was happy with his own musing as the miles spooled past. There was not much traffic even in the narrow streets where the sacral brothels were. But it was late, and of course there was the gasoline rationing. One saw more horse-drawn vehicles these days than before the war. Dorothea had written him about a sugar shortage, too. Everything was rationed. But the fundamental nature of the countryside hadn’t changed, especially here beyond the city center. Telegraph poles lined the cobbled road, and the smell of burning sod was pungent in the cold air.
He was surprised at the upwelling of pleasure he felt when the car came abreast of the house. It was a small house compared to the rambling compounds of the Censeurs farther west, but spacious enough and respectably old. It had belonged to an uncle of Dorothea’s and still did not properly belong to Demarch; it was an extended loan from the Saussere family during his posting to the capital. But he had lived here for ten years. It was as much a home as any place had ever been. More so.
He thanked the driver and walked briskly up the stone steps to the door. The door opened before he touched it. Dorothea stood in a halo of lamplight, perfect and beckoning. Light twinkled from the silver crucifix pinned to her bodice. He embraced her and she offered her powdered cheek for a kiss.
Christof peeked at him from behind a banister, frowning. Well, Christof had always been shy at reunions. It was hard for him to have a father so often absent. But that was what it meant to be born into a Bureau family.
Dorothea whispered, “Father is here.” And Demarch saw the wheelchair rolling from the study, Armand Saussere seeming to smile but as inscrutable as ever behind his vastly old face.
Demarch closed the door on the night air. The smell of home surrounded him. “Christof, come here,” he said. But Christof kept his wary distance.
The same driver arrived in the morning to take him to town. The temperature had dropped but the sky was cloudless. “Pas de neige,” the driver said. No snow. Not yet.
Demarch let familiar sights lull him until the car passed under the eagle gates of the Bureau Centrality. The Centrality was a town of its own, with its good and bad neighborhoods, its loved and hated citizens. The Censeurs in their black hats and soutanes moved across the courtyard between the Ordinage and Propaganda wings like stalking birds. Demarch felt compromised in his simple lieutenant’s uniform. When he worked here he had seldom crossed the invisible line separating staff officers from the hierarchs’ quarters… unless he was summoned, always a frightening episode. Well, today he had been summoned, too.