WAKING IN HYSTERIA, screaming, slapping at the light panels, no light, darkness, bolting into the night, crashing into something heavy, a statue, no, something else, a sentinel!
It is Darian, startled, his hands in front of his face for a moment to protect it from my feeble half-asleep slapping; at last he takes my wrists in his hands, warm and damp, and stares at me as if I were the last thing anyone had expected to see on the planet. “Emerson?”
I’m sputtering, I cannot speak. At last I explain that there was something in my room, something in there with me, something that touched me, that slid in through the angle between wall and ceiling from another place, and fell onto my cot, and touched me—
He’s staring at me, honestly baffled. “A rat,” he offers a moment later, and lets me go, and even puts his hands on my shoulders for a second, surprising us both. “One of Winnie’s rats, maybe?”
“No! It wasn’t a rat. Or maybe, I don’t know.”
I’m shivering in my thin night clothes, not pajamas but a t-shirt and cargo pants, not dissimilar but lighter than the stuff I wear during the day (“Always,” Dr. Aaron told us, “wear something you can run in”), and he starts to steer me back towards the pod.
I resist for a second, dig my socked feet into the sharply rubbled ground. Let the sun come up, I want to beg him. But then I go limp, and we walk back to the pod, and it’s warm inside, and there is nothing, of course, in my room; we check every corner, awkwardly weaving around each other, his big body and my small one far too much for the little space. It is spotless, no footprints, no spoor, no fur.
“Nightmare,” I say, as we eat breakfast, when Winnie asks me what all the noise was about.
“Oh, I’ve been getting those here,” she says. “I suppose it’s the—you know.” She waves her spoon around at the dead city. “Full immersion in the most gruesome place I’ve ever been in my life.”
“Yeah.”
Chernobyl, Eva said. I jump to see the word on the screen. Yes. It did split open, during the Invasion or the Setback or shortly after, and has only recently been brought back under control, somewhat, with a nanofilament shell around it like a huge honeycomb. The grumpy stalwarts still living nearby, eating their irradiated berries and mushrooms, had all vanished, of course, like virtually everyone else. No bodies. No one goes there to study now. Maybe in a hundred years or so. When we are all dead, and have passed our torches to yet another generation of eager students.
Was it a rat I saw? I’m sure I saw something.
This idea Eva had, that They were gods or something, I can’t get behind that, but I can’t shake it either. They had the trappings of gods, maybe They had fooled other worlds. But no hint of real divinity, except for power.
Gods have a system.
October 20
Tried to return to the seminary, harried and trapped by sentinels. But, predicting it, V. and I had armed ourselves like road warriors, and somewhat to our surprise, killed (I think?) one of the statues.
The body, seemingly solid brass, vanished into a pool of bubbling sludge (ask around: has anyone seen that?) but the head that we so inefficiently and with such effort cut off with the shovel remained startlingly, even alarmingly intact. One eye open, one eye shut, instantly glazed as if it had been sprayed with paint.
We studied it for a while, panting, arms over our mouths and noses from the smell of its… well. You can’t say blood. It was too runny, and black and blue, and glittering, and flowed briefly over the ground, wilting the grass as it went. I watched it flow over a discarded screw, and sputter and fizz into transparency for a moment.
We should keep it as a trophy, I said.
Definitely not, V. said. I don’t want that anywhere near where I’m sleeping.
That’s a good point, I said, but reluctantly; you know you can kill the sentinels, and you know you can sort of pause the statues, but it’s still academic until you are actually standing over one, watching your shovel melt away from the wooden handle.
There, he said. That’s a proper act of war, anyway.
Yes, I said. We should get to paint one on the side of our tank.
Or plane.
Yes.
But we’d need a tank or a plane.
There’s a lot of tanks, I said thoughtfully, in that park on the other side of town.
Maybe, he said, we should just draw one on our arms instead.
I wish we’d had a guillotine, I said. That took forever.
We kept looking at the head, and then I began to feel nauseated, and faint, and we staggered away to get some fresher air. But I felt good. Hopeful, even. Not, I mean, that it’s good to kill—I don’t mean that. But that it’s good to kill if what you’re killing wants to kill you all the time and has killed just about, but not quite, everyone you loved.
In the playground near our new flat, we sat on the swings and ate ornamental crabapples, wincing at the splendid tartness. I said, We would fight if we could, but we can’t. We would surrender if we could, but we can’t. What do you suppose that’s doing to people’s minds?
V. shrugged. Well. It’s not like we had some… pre-existing understanding that… you know. That this dimension belonged to us.
No pact of non-aggression or whatever.
No. We haven’t been betrayed. I just keep wondering… why us? Why here? When They could be anywhere?
Maybe They have a different map of the world than we do, I said hopelessly. Maybe there’s a note on certain cities saying MONSTERS WELCOME HERE.
He said, We keep setting off Their traps. How can we get to the seminary?
I said, We need more people.
November 1
I have to write this down.
K. said, idly, while we were digging the summer potatoes, You know, negotiation with Them may not be possible, but we don’t know what other places are doing.
I was only half-paying attention, I was sweaty, thirsty. I said, What does that mean?
He said, How do you think we’ve all survived in the past? Not knuckling under, that’s not what I mean. Not making offerings. Just… going along with things. Being compliant.
I filled one more bucket, I think, before I straightened up and looked at him. The wind picked up and his hair gleamed for a second in the sunlight, like the glossy grass around us. I didn’t glare, I didn’t frown, I didn’t yell or rant or wave my trowel. Only inside came a shrill, frightened yowl, drowning out all reason. I took a few deep breaths.
I said, Appeasement, you mean.
No! What an awful, ugly word. And the time for that is past, anyway. I mean, working together. Cooperation. At least for a little while.
Ah, I said.
He said, To let humanity recoup, give us a little breathing room without being so… so constantly persecuted. For God’s sake, it’s not capitulation. It’s common sense. You know They are mostly cracking down on people who offend Them in some way. I don’t know. I am just thinking aloud here.
He was, too. And I wondered whose benefit that was for, who was listening aside from us. The grass around us rustled, but it was windy, the wind fluting through the broken glass dome, I remember that. The weeds and wildflowers looked all right, only a few twisted, with translucent, milky panes in their stems or petals, faceted like the eyes of insects. Their rich smell was all around us. I thought: If you are very small and the bees cannot see you, they will have to find you some other way; you cannot stay a secret if it is not your life’s purpose to be a secret. But you can if there are no bees.
His speech didn’t sound rehearsed. Of course, if I were a spy, I would rehearse it till it didn’t.