She moved, and he turned with her movement to follow her image in the stainless steel; she slipped off the reflective surface; and when he 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 spiderweb 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 mouth 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-40 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.
G-64 in Bin 487.