Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu

by Constantine, Storm

  “So this is the one,” he said finally, pushing his plate away. “I mean, this is the one.”

  “Excuse me?” I straightened in my seat. “This is the one I told you about, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “He doesn’t speak, Manifest. He’s–”

  “Abnormal,” Luster sneered. “Jeez, Heart, how could you?”

  I bowed my head, ready to accept my superiors’ fury. “Yes. He is. I found out… after I brought him back here… that he used to live in a mental institution. There were stamps inside his clothes. I think he might be autistic or something.”

  Luster burst out laughing – the hard sinister, gloating laugh we all hated. “I don’t believe it, Heart. You idiot! The ‘best, the strongest, the wildest’ – well, maybe this one is wild, but not how we meant – and you go picking up some freak who–”

  “Shut up!” Manifest snapped, making Luster flinch. “Not another word, Luster. Now, tell me more, Heart. All of it.”

  And so I started over from the beginning, in detail. I began with the burning houses and worked up to the shower, omitting only my own arousal. I was still afraid Manifest would round on me sooner or later and I didn’t want to look even more foolish.

  As I told my story, I studied my companions’ expressions, the tone of their questions. Luster alternately rolled his eyes and scowled, apparently ready to call me an idiot first chance he got. Manifest, though… He was getting even more agitated than he had the first time I’d told him. When I described Sphinx praying in the shower, he went completely rigid.

  He didn’t move a muscle until I was finished. Then he said: “It’s him.”

  My face must have gone blank as pavement. I glanced over to Luster, who appeared similarly baffled.

  He spoke first. “Him? It’s him? It’s him what?”

  Manifest didn’t respond. He was studying Sphinx again. By now the boy was long through with his dinner. For some minutes, he’d been playing with a shiny spoon.

  “OK, you two,” Manifest began. “I understand – you don’t know, you don’t feel it the way I do… so let me explain.”

  He folded his arms together, resting them on the table, and leaned forward, as if he was going to share a secret. Which he did.

  “All day long I’ve been… anxious,” he admitted. “You both know that. What you don’t know is why.” He paused and looked up at the ceiling. “It started right about the time we first arrived in town, before we had even launched our first attacks. This feeling of anticipation, as if something special, some turning point, was going to happen and everything was going to change.”

  “For our tribe?” Luster asked. “Because if you mean that, why of course–”

  All Manifest had to do was glare and Luster shut up. “No. I mean… Well, you’ll see what I mean. If you let me talk. Let’s see… Yes, well, every day I’d go about my business and this feeling kept growing. It wasn’t a bad feeling, like being scared, it was just this nagging feeling of ‘Something’s going to happen.’ I had no idea what, except every time I went around to check things out – in town, in the changing rooms, just day-to-day stuff, I got this feeling that we were coming up to some kind of turning point. And I think we’ve reached it.”

  “What makes you think that?” I dared ask. “Obviously you’ve learned something specific, or you wouldn’t be so obsessed with this boy here.”

  Manifest cracked a smile. “You’re right. I have learned something. Came to me in a dream.” He laughed, eyeing our no doubt surprised expressions. “I know, and you thought I was a completely practical, pragmatic har. I am, you know, but we’re not men, are we? We are more than that, we’ve got magic and more besides, and last night I think I got a glimpse of what that can mean.

  “I had trouble sleeping at first. That feeling of ‘Something’s coming’ had grown so big I wasn’t just thinking about it now and then, but I was turning it over and over in my head, all the time. What was coming? Could I do something to make it happen? Should I maybe be more scared of it? I must’ve finally conked out though, because next thing I knew it was at least a couple of hours later and my head was full of the most potent dreams I’ve ever had.

  “I can’t explain it except to say that, Heart, you’ve brought in the har – the boy, now – I dreamt about. The things you’ve told me – the fire, running, the praying – and the things you haven’t told me, but I can feel… it’s just like the dream. I won’t say I saw a face, but when I look at that boy, I know it’s him.”

  There was a silence, and then Luster cleared his throat. “You say ‘the boy, now,’ tiahaar. Can I take from this that you are considering incepting him? Surely you can’t be–”

  “I’m not going to tell you to shut up again, Luster.” Manifest looked to me, apparently feeling I’d be more likely to agree with him. “That’s the next step, Heart. We’ve got to incept him.”

  I chose my response carefully. “Do you really think that’s, um, wise, Manifest? Or possible?”

  “Possible? Well, of course it’s possible! As for it being wise, yes, absolutely, I believe it is. You want to know why, Heart?”

  I nodded, having no idea where he was leading.

  He took my hand and squeezed. “Because at the end of the dream there was a vision, a certainty of feeling, that this person I was dreaming of had become har. A very special, powerful har. And I saw him taking aruna – with you.”

  A flash of adolescence came back to me and I blushed. “Um…” I said, searching for words. “That’s very interesting, tiahaar.”

  Manifest still had my hand, and with it he pulled me to my feet. “You like the idea, admit it. Yes… I can sense that you do. It’s all right, Heart, he’s yours.”

  I felt a little faint. I rubbed my face with my other hand. “Thanks.”

  Luster, who’d shrunk up and stayed quiet since being snapped at, finally spoke up. “So this inception – when’s it going to happen?”

  Manifest let go of my hand and moved to stand behind Sphinx, who’d stopped playing with the spoon and was simply staring at the table. “We will have him wait all through tomorrow, with a full fast. Then tomorrow night, we incept him.”

  Luster was frowning. “We’ve got a round of boys who might not be done with their althaia by tomorrow. Shouldn’t this boy wait for the next round?”

  “Absolutely not!” Manifest snapped.

  This time I jumped. “Um, what are your plans?” I asked, recovering my composure.

  “Yes,” Luster chimed in. “Did you get special plans from your dream?”

  Manifest sighed (probably wanting to tell him to shut up again). “No, actually this is something I’ve been thinking for some time.” He went back to his chair and rested his hands on the back of it. “This mass incepting we’re doing in the changing room. It’s working well, better than it used to, but I think we could do even better. The attendants – they’re helping. The different medicines we’ve been experimenting with – I think those are making a difference, too. But doing that many at once, with only really a couple of helpers? And the way they all still suffer so badly? Surely we can do better.”

  “But what about the fact we want only the strong to survive?” Luster questioned. This was a major part of the philosophy of inception – if you didn’t survive althaia, you weren’t meant to be har.

  “I think only the strong will survive,” Manifest replied, “but I don’t think it’s necessary for everyone who gets incepted to come out the other side feeling like he’s been through some kind of damn war or torture session!” At this he stepped back from the chair, surprised at his own outburst, I think. “Sorry, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about. I guess it all fits in with this being a turning point. Things are going to change around here, and I think it starts with this boy.

  “I wouldn’t want him to go through the normal procedure. I’d guess that to be how he is, he’s already had plenty of bad stuff happen to him, and
living in a mental ward, seen a lot of bad stuff too. I think if anybody needs a special inception, with special care, it’s him. And if he comes out the other side fully incepted and at least no different than he is now – which he won’t, because I know he won’t – then he’ll have been our test subject for what we do in the future.”

  He picked up his wine glass and gestured for us to do the same. Thorn stepped over towards us with the wine bottle and poured. Manifest raised his glass in a toast. “To the turning point.” We chinked our glasses, and glanced down at Sphinx. The boy had fallen asleep.

  You Will Be, You Will Be

  Sphinx

  Darkness. Quiet. A strange place. Not my old room.

  I’d been sleeping in a bed. A new starting point.

  I sat up. Do I wait? Do I get up? Will someone come for me?

  Suddenly there was a light, at first just a narrow line, but then opening up. Three lines of light; a door opening into the dark room. Quickly, the door closed. A bright light was thrust into my face.

  So you’re the one! a voice shouted at me, straight into my head, right then, right into my head. So special! I don’t think so. You’re nothing!

  I squinted against the light, covered my ears from the sound that was not a sound. I couldn’t see the body, but I saw the face, caught by the light, ugly in its rage.

  A strong hand grabbed my wrist, jerked me onto the floor. He thinks he can have you, but he can’t. You’re nothing! Nothing! Pain and pain and pain as he kicked me, as the words seared into my brain like no other words had in a long time.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t scream. In fact, I was even quieter than before. I shut my eyes. Why couldn’t I shut my ears? Shut off my body?

  You’re going to die, whether Manifest wants you to or—

  The kicks stopped. Somewhere in the room, just over me, in the darkness, there was a struggle. Hitting, kicking, cursing, growling. I kept my eyes shut.

  The door slammed and it was quiet, except for a strange sound. Somebody took my wrist again – gently. The light came on, pointing towards not the golden one, not the Nothing! man, but towards the other one. The boy from the shower. His face was bleeding.

  He took my other hand. “Are you OK?” he asked me.

  I jumped back. His words had come too close. They were loud and big and I couldn’t run away from them. I scrambled to the bed.

  He scrambled after me and a moment later, took me in his arms and held me. Of course you’re not OK, he said, this time in the less scary words, the real words. But you will be. You will be.

  Be His Protector

  Heart

  His rescue came almost by accident. If I’d been passing down that corridor just a moment later, I might not have noticed the golden figure slipping quickly into Sphinx’s Forale chamber. I had planned on stopping by but… as fate would have it, I was in the right place at the right time.

  Luster and I fought like animals, clawing and kicking at one another in the near dark, while somewhere nearby Sphinx huddled in silence. I knew what Luster had been doing – I’d felt his malevolence and Sphinx’s terror right through the door – and I was also aware at what had driven him to it. He was used to being Manifest’s closest aide, his closest confidante. Manifest’s obsessive fixation on the boy, and his decision to bring him to us through inception, threatened his position. I wonder now whether Luster had a thing for Manifest and it was lover’s jealousy.

  At the time, of course, I didn’t care about such distinctions. All I wanted was Luster out of that room away from Sphinx. Although just a few hours earlier, I’d been resigned to having him rejected and probably killed out of hand, ever since Manifest had made his decision – and promised him to me – I had been filled with an overwhelming sense of protectiveness. Maybe I was fighting with a lover’s jealousy, too, although I didn’t know it at the time.

  Finally I routed Luster out of the room, into the hall. Several guards and high-ranked hara were there waiting, including Manifest. I thrust Luster, bleeding from nose and mouth, into the arms of the nearest guard. “He just tried to kill that boy,” I said.

  Manifest stepped forward, rigid with anxiety. “What did he do? Is the boy hurt?”

  “No, he’s not hurt,” I said. “Not seriously, anyway. Just a little roughed up. His mind, however…”

  “Say no more,” Manifest said softly. “I want you to go to him now. You must make him feel better, as much as you can.” He walked with me the short paces back to the door. “Afterward, leave guards at the door and go back to sleep. Then during the day, watch the door yourself.”

  I nodded. “Be his protector.”

  “Yes. And one more thing. In the afternoon, I want you to go in and try to talk with him. Tell him about Wraeththu, about us. I don’t care if he doesn’t speak back, doesn’t nod or blink. I think he will understand.”

  I reached for the doorknob. “I’ll try,” I said.

  Manifest smiled. “I know you will. There will be a reward for you, Heart, of that I’m sure.”

  Dutifully, I sat with Sphinx for a half an hour at least, cradling his trembling body. I pulled a blanket of calm and safety around us, trying to soothe away the terrors Luster had wrought.

  I knew Luster had been screaming at him through the powers of his mind, because I had sensed it, but I didn’t know exactly what he’d said. The fact that Sphinx had picked up on them, however, gave me hope that perhaps he wasn’t beyond my reach. And so I whispered to him words of comfort, assurances of protection, like a mother talking a young child after a nightmare.

  Finally Sphinx was asleep and I left him curled up in bed like a sleeping dark-haired angel. I took the flashlight with me and flicked the switch high on the wall for the emergency light. I didn’t want him waking up in darkness.

  After a few hours sleep in my room in the barracks, I returned to the Forale chamber to stand guard and, in a sense, stand vigil. I didn’t go in to see him. Nohar was to talk to a human during Forale, except during the time of explaining, if in fact there was one. It used to be that nohar ever explained, but simply took any boy they wanted. Understanding and consent were irrelevant. Nobody had asked me if I wanted to be incepted. I’d simply been locked in a closet, pulled out for the Harhune, and then thrown back into the closet.

  By the time I was sitting outside Sphinx’s room, however, our practices had changed and boys were often told in advance what would happen, to some degree at least. Of course none of them were ever given any real idea of what inception would entail, for it would make consent even more impossible. For most it was bad enough to have the vague details – of a coming time of suffering, of being (as they saw it) unmanned, of becoming something alien.

  With Sphinx I left nothing out. As he lay staring at the ceiling, stomach growling, I first told him as much as I knew about the history of Wraeththu: how we began (or thought we did), the battles we had fought, who our leaders were. In the second half of my talk, I told him what Wraeththu are: our powers, our bodies, and inception, the trial we undergo to attain them.

  I knew Sphinx wouldn’t scream in fear or try to escape when I told him these things. I couldn’t imagine that at all. He would endure it just as he’d endured everything else, in stoic silence.

  It was close to midnight when a messenger came to tell me it was time. He waited while I fetched Sphinx, who followed me out as if he hadn’t a care in the world. I followed the messenger, not actually knowing where we were going. Manifest had, I assumed, found an alternate location for this alternate inception. The regular changing room was still in use and as he’d said the night before, this inception was to be special.

  To my surprise, the rooms we were taken to were only just around the corner from the main headquarters offices. As far as I knew, these rooms had never been used for anything, but simply kept vacant. Up until then, I hadn’t really wondered why. After the messenger opened the main door, however, I understood. Manifest had been planning to use them all along.

&nbs
p; These rooms had once been the nurse’s offices. Like the administrative suite, there was a reception area with several rooms leading off it, in this case, exam rooms and offices. It would be, I immediately realized, an ideal environment to carry out a more controlled, medicalised inception.

  Manifest stepped out of one of the exam rooms. “Good, you’re just in time. Rock and I have everything ready.”

  “Rock?” I asked, moving forward with Sphinx beside me.

  Manifest nodded and headed back into the room. “Of course. He carries out the inceptions downstairs, so I wanted him for this new procedure as well.”

  “Of course,” I said, feeling dazed. The exam room certainly didn’t look like the room I’d been incepted in or, for that matter, the changing room. In the centre of the room a low bed had been prepared with a set of clean, white sheets. Beside it was set up a chair and a tray with various medical implements, one of which was a large syringe. The entire room was clean and bright. A counter with a sink ran along the wall and to the left of that, a door led into a restroom with a shower. (How I wish I’d had one of those for use during my inception!)

  “Welcome to the future,” Manifest said finally, once I’d finished my appraisal. “Now let’s get to work. First, tell me, you explained things to him?”

  I nodded.

  “Good, at least that’s done with. Now let’s just have him lie down…”

  It was in the end nothing more than a medical procedure. Manifest began by having all Sphinx’s clothes removed; the boy did not resist. Next Manifest gave Sphinx some water with drug tablets mixed into it. Some sort of strong sedative, he told us, something to last several hours. I had an intuition that Sphinx wouldn’t need it – he seemed stoic beyond belief – but it was merciful all the same.

  Finally Manifest asked me to kneel at the head of the bed and hold Sphinx’s shoulders. “He may struggle,” he warned me. Again, I didn’t think he would, but of course I obeyed.