The second was glass-smooth but dark. Light seemed to touch it and vanish, to be gathered in and nullified. It was faceted and part of it appeared and disappeared like reflections in mirrors when the surfaces were turned. It was large and thin and tall, then it was tiny and endwise and razored; then it was gone, then it was back.
And behind them came a thing that moved like a chicken, arching itself forward then hauling itself up behind and under. It was covered with matted fur like a rat that has soaked itself in oil. The tips of the hairs gave off a faint green light.
And behind it came a thing that looked like cheesecloth, but it was made of flesh. It was oozing with dark blood, and there were mouths everywhere on it, and rings of teeth and the blood could be seen pumping and circulating through the tubes that joined the empty holes in its rotting cheesecloth form.
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 hands. 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 comer, 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 wall-slatted, 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.