by Angels
“I’m observing some curious maculæ, these days,” said Mantheor. “Their evolution is very interesting, I can’t find any parallel to them in what I’ve recorded so far and—”
I cut him off:
“Mantheor! I am back from the desert. I saw something there. . . .”
He looked at me, perplexed.
“But there is nothing to see in the desert,” he objected. “Have you become interested in dunes now?”
I leaned toward him over the table, forcing him to lean back sharply in response. I said, slowly:
“Captain Mantheor, the rebels to the transformation survived. I met their descendants in the desert. They know that Manoâr exists, and I believe they’re about to pay us a visit.”
The patriarch pushed back his chair, stood, considered me with his blue gaze. He said, in a tone full of cold pity: “You’re raving, Mospedeo. Mashak came back from the desert screaming, and you, in turn, have lost your mind. I order you to return to your home and not to go out again until you’ve calmed down.”
I attempted to argue, but he refused to listen; and looking at his eyes, I knew it was useless to persist.
I wandered in Manoâr, the toy-city, for a long while. I concluded that I had made an error in pressing Mantheor; he had felt threatened, his revulsion at the thought I might have touched him had rendered him insensible to logic. I had feared to see him collapse upon learning my news; but I hadn’t thought he could defend against it by refusing to hear my words. The sleeper, being woken, buries his head under the pillow and dives even more deeply into his dream. . . .
When I decided to go see the others, to attempt to convince at least one of them, despite the risks, it was already too late. Mantheor must have warned them: all avoided me. Only Mervelld let me approach him. He told me:
“Go home, Mospedeo. Mantheor wants you to stay there until you’re back to normal.”
I implored him: “Let me speak to you, Mervelld. . . .” But he shut and barred his door.
So I went home. My second home, the watchtower. The petals were closing slowly with the drop in ambient temperature. From the top of the tower, I saw most of the city: the stone-paved streets; Amaranth Boulevard; the empty plazas; the greenhouses where our food was grown; the antenna I had not noticed for centuries—the antenna at the top of Paradise’s dome, which spread its metallic corolla and pointed its pistil straight toward the star of origin.
I stayed there, observing the thermosensitive walls folding themselves slowly around myself, and then, for the first time in perhaps a thousand years, I stood watch.
It took them three days to arrive. Three days during which I stopped my watch only to filch some food and water.
The first day, I waited patiently, knowing the great distance that separated them from us. The first night, while the projectors sent their torrents of light toward the uncaring stars, I half-slept, exhausted by my long run. Yet I would constantly start awake; I scanned the horizon through the wall’s portholes, but nothing appeared. The second day, the city’s inertia began to close down on me. I felt my memories stir, but when I merely brushed against them, the vertigo of the centuries seized me. Wait. It would be time to regain them soon enough. The second night, I began to doubt myself. To tell myself Mantheor must have been right: my mind had been deranged by my stay in the desert. I had dreamed all of it: the corpse, the jewelry, the arrows. I felt the nape of my neck: no scar, no reason to believe I had ever been wounded. I watched a cobb that had spun its web between two walls, in the vain hope of catching a musk or two. How could I have believed that this minuscule animal could grow to twice the length of a man? I began to weep softly.
The morning of the third day, I saw them. A black speck first, nothing real, surely an optical illusion. Then a spot. The silvery sun hooked a reflection from a metal ornament, once, twice, three times. I remained there, watching their approach, then suddenly I remembered what I had resolved to do.
I came down from the tower, went to the doors of Paradise. They refused to open. I started when a screen whose existence I had forgotten lit up; Mantheor’s image overhung me. He asked: “What do you want, Mospedeo?”
“I want to ask you a favour. In exchange, I promise to yield to your judgement.”
He said nothing. I continued:
“I ask you to climb up the watchtower with me. If you still judge that I’m troubled by my stay in the desert, so be it: I’ll shut myself in my house, and I won’t go out until I’m sane again. I have no arguments to give you. I simply ask you to climb up and see something. Even if it’s only Manoâr from high above.”
His face reflected an emotion I wasn’t able to interpret. He said: “If I must. Wait for me.”
After a long while, the airlock opened. Mantheor was, as usual, wrapped in his fur coat. He followed me in silence through the streets of Manoâr. He ascended before me the watchtower’s stairs. Once at the top, I showed him the dark blot on the horizon. He leaned forward, holding to the handrail that surrounded the platform. Then he took out of his coat the two lenses with which he observed the sun; he gazed at the spot.
They slowly came near. Soon I was able to distinguish the giant cobs, one behind the other, their riders, the moving dots of the false-dogs.
Mantheor remained immobile, contemplating them. Every passing second increased my feeling of victory; I had to strain myself not to start laughing like a child. Finally, I could stand it no longer.
“Well? Now you believe me.”
Mantheor turned to me, pocketing the lenses in his fur coat. When his hand came back out, it held something whose very name I had forgotten, though its function was clear enough. He pointed the weapon at me, ordered me not to move.
I became frightened of what was in his eyes; perhaps he wouldn’t have fired after all, but how could I know? I seized his wrist, tried to make him lose his grip. For an instant, I had seen myself as a young adult, fighting against an old man. I had forgotten the transformation. Forgotten that the captain, more than anyone else, would have seen his physical abilities augmented. Forgotten our entire conditioning against physical contact.
He screamed when my skin touched his. The weapon fired, the jet of energy missed me, struck the metal handrail. My cells wanted me to loose my hold, but the Mospedeo from twelve hundred years back refused to listen.
Mantheor twisted within my grip for a split second, then he freed himself. It was as if my fingers had been torn off; like wrestling with a sandstorm. He took a step back, aiming his hand weapon at me. His face showed only an overwhelming horror.
I didn’t take time to think; I threw myself on him, grasping him in a desperate hug. This time, I screamed also. But I kept my hold.
Mantheor began to run blindly; we hit the handrail, white-hot from the energy discharge; I felt my jumpsuit char. My feet no longer touched the ground; I used them to strike frenetically at Mantheor’s ankles while he tried to free himself from my embrace. But I was the one with the advantage now; he couldn’t grasp my arms to pry them apart, and thus had to twist his whole body to rid himself of me.
And then we went over the railing. The sensation of falling joined with the terrible revulsion of contact finally forced me to let go. I heard a dull noise when Mantheor struck the corner of a building, then I crashed onto the ground.
I opened my eyes. I was lying on my back. Fifty metres above me rose the watchtower’s corolla. Several of my bones had cracked, but I had suffered no serious fracture, if I could trust my sensations. I got up painfully, feeling a brief vertigo. How much time had passed? Where was Mantheor?
I saw him the next instant. Wrapped as always in his fur coat, which had closed itself tightly around him (and suddenly I understood it was an armour), he did not seem to have suffered too much from the impact, but he was still unconscious. I went to him, checked that he was still breathing. The weapon had gone from his hand, but I could not manage to find it.
&n
bsp; I heard Mayter cry out in surprise when he saw us. Others were arriving, having heard the noise of my fight with Mantheor. I stumbled away, deaf to their questions. I saw Mactaledry kneel at Mantheor’s side, his relieved expression when the patriarch began to stir.
Should I hide? Would Mantheor really try to kill me? It was too late, now. It would not prevent the Others’ descendants from coming.
Their scouts had already reached Manoâr. When I arrived at the frontier of the city, they saw me. They did not attack me. I approached them slowly. Their shawls were embroidered in brightly coloured geometric designs. They kept their hands far from their weapons; I tried to imitate their bearing. I still felt dizzy from my fall; for an instant, I feared I would collapse upon the sand.
When they were five metres distant, I stopped. One of them was a female. She raised her left hand, showing me her palm, tattooed with a complicated spiral. She said: “Hommort, hall.” I copied her gesture. My voice was a croak; I answered “Eternity, Other.”
We stayed thus for long minutes, each one awaiting from the other a gesture that would not come. Then a terrified voice rose from the centre of Manoâr: Mervelld’s voice. Mervelld, who had climbed the watchtower, who had seen what could no longer remain unseen: the caravan advancing, approaching the city, detouring around the ultimate dune, stopping in front of me.
A man came down from the gigantic cobb that bore him. He was so old and so frail that he terrified me ten times more than the corpse had. He approached me, flanked by two guards, who held their spears point up. He spoke to me. In my language, with the artificial accent of those who know a tongue from its written form only.
“Dead man,” he said in a voice that belied his fragility. “Here the city of the dead. It is?”
I hesitated, then answered “Yes.” It was nothing more than the truth.
He continued:
“Around are the God-ways, to lead the soul to stars. Here, the guardians of the Way. Those which will not die the time. The dead angels.”
Screams rose from nearly everywhere in Manoâr. I heard someone call: “Mantheor! Mantheor!” A memory came up suddenly from the depths of my mind, but it did not reach the surface. Yet I had the impression that the caravan must leave this place at once.
“Leave,” I said. “You must leave!”
The old man went on: “We have a task. The Litan sends to bring back a secret of the dead angels.”
“Then come!” I cried. “Come into the city! Now!”
And I began to run inward. After a moment’s hesitation, they got in motion to follow me.
Then there rose a hollow vibration in the air, which became a dissonant ululation. The intrusion alert. All these hours of conditioning, these grafts of new reflexes necessary for crossing the centuries. Everything had been foreseen. What was to happen would be no more than an immune reaction.
The red hemispheres at the periphery unsealed with the clap of air rushing into a vacuum, pivoted on an axis parallel to the ground, revealing the plasma cannons meant to insure Manoâr’s external defense.
I screamed: “Run!” and fled toward the centre, soon passed by the cobbs running on their six legs. But the guns did not fire. Emplaced to defend against the outside only, I thought, their program forbids them from firing on the city itself. . . .
I turned back just in time to see the only shot fired, on a laggard false-dog that had remained outside the perimeter. The animal disappeared in a flowering of energy, the sand vitrified under the impact. Even one of us would have been destroyed. Even one of the dead angels of Manoâr.
An enemy is loose inside the city. . . . The first defenses have failed. . . . Operations must be coordinated. . . . The thoughts that had crossed my mind when we were hunting Mashak. And which must now resonate in all our skulls. There was only one thing to do: reach Paradise before it was too late.
But it was too late. When we all came into the central plaza, myself in the lead, the descendants of the Others right behind me, they were already there, waiting for us.
Mactaledry held an EM rifle aimed at us. Martegen had put on an exoskeleton from whose joints flowered clusters of electrical spines. Mayter held, two-handed, a tubular weapon whose function I had forgotten; from the power supply ran a copper snake ending in a mask held tightly against his face; electrodes jabbed in at the temples. The luminous dots of the laser-aimers changed targets according to the movements of his eyes.
Mantheor stood among them. He had thrown off the exterior layer of his coat; there only remained the infrangible armor, covering him from neck to ankles. For an instant, I saw him on the deck of the ship; I heard his brief orders, given in a perfectly calm voice from the midst of disaster. But that man was dead.
I took a few steps. Behind me, the caravan had stopped. The old man’s voice rose, but I paid no attention to his words.
Rage seized me once more. But it was no longer self-directed; I had a true objective. I asked Mantheor:
“Now what will you do? Kill them? Kill me, perhaps?!”
I had started to shout. I advanced upon Mactaledry, seized the muzzle of his rifle with both hands. I screamed: “Well, go ahead, shoot! What are you waiting for?”
He freed his weapon from my grip, pointed it toward the caravan. I interposed myself again: “To kill them, you must kill me first.” He stepped back.
Melfidian exclaimed: “There is an enemy inside the city! An enemy . . .” He had the fixed gaze of the blind.
“What enemy?” I shouted. “There is no enemy!”
I could not understand why they had not yet fired. Mayter’s weapon clicked softly, twittering when it acquired a new target. I realized that they were all watching Mantheor, that they waited still, after twelve hundred years, for their captain’s orders.
And Mantheor watched me, his sky-coloured eyes wide open, without a word. I saw him shake. Intermittently, I thought to see the man he had once been, not the Patriarch of Manoâr.
Again, the old interpret spoke:
“The Litan sends to bring back the secret of undeath. He offers multitudes of gifts and powers to gain the help of the dead angels and permit not to die.”
I turned to face him: “The secret of undeath will not be given.”
He begged: “The dead man is ired because we attacked him. We ask for his pardon. We buried the dead woman near the God-way for the soul to be fast to the stars. We did not wanted to offend the guardians of the Way. The Litan is multitude powerful and sends rich presents. . . .”
I cut him off: “The secret of undeath does not belong to mortals. Only angels are undead. Not men—not women. Only angels.”
He lowered his gaze, spoke in a voice that now betrayed his age: “The Litan will be ired. The defeat is regrettable. We will be punished.”
I turned to Mantheor.
“Let them leave. Captain, let them leave. If you destroy them, others will come. Again and again, for always. But if they leave freely, you will never see them again. You have dreamed; you are dreaming still, though it’s a nightmare. Forget it. Let those who troubled you leave in peace. Forget. There is no enemy. There is no alarm. It was an error. We will cross the centuries like a ship the ocean of night. You will forget the others. They never existed. Mantheor, shut down the defence systems. We are not in danger. Let them leave and avoid contamination.”
I don’t know how long I begged him, but suddenly the captain in him woke up, truly woke up, for a brief moment, and he knew—of that, I am sure—he understood; he manipulated a control box and the siren fell silent.
“Leave,” I said to the caravan. “Leave now, or the angels of the city of the dead will destroy you!”
The old man translated for the others. They began to move away, reluctantly.
Mevianis spoke a single syllable, not even a word. I saw Mashak’s gaze in his eyes, and in this syllable I heard all the echoes Mashak’s scream had ever woken. He calmly revers
ed his weapon and fired. I believe it was because he had no other means to free the scream in himself.
They made a circle around him; they watched him scream and die. I heard the caravan fleeing, and I thought, They’re abandoning me. I understood I would nevermore be one of the Hommorts of Manoâr, and I fled in turn. Behind me, Manoâr’s walls echoed Mevianis’s scream in an eerie perfection; as if it would never cease.
I had caught up with them by the time they crossed the perimeter line; the plasma cannons remained inert. Soon we left the spoke, the God-way, to strike out among the dunes.
I did not need to exhort them to continue their flight; they ran until they were exhausted. It was already late; they collapsed, sheltering themselves from the vesperal winds on the side of a dune, not bothering to set up the tents. I had energy to run for hours still, enough to distance myself sufficiently from Manoâr; but I stayed with them. If Mantheor should yield to what had destroyed Mashak and Mevianis, if he should go down into the lower levels of Paradise and birth a new sun on the face of the desert, I wanted to remain with those who had revealed myself to myself.
They did not understand why I had accompanied them; I gave tangled explanations to the old interpreter, to the effect that I would myself give our refusal to the Litan in order that he spare his envoys. I doubt that they believed me, but recent events have so thoroughly gone beyond their understanding that they will sooner or later fabricate a legend to mask what truly happened.
I went to find one of the scouts, the woman who saluted me when we met; I saluted her once more, and when she offered me her palm, I managed to brush my own against it.
I am standing on a dune, looking toward Manoâr. The sun has long since set. I await the explosion that will sweep us all away in an instant, but nothing happens. At the zenith, a few scraps of cloud shine in the light of the projectors that have been lit tonight as every other night, a blind eye turned to the stars. Did Mevianis’s soul follow the luminous ribbon to return to where we came from?
