Five World Saga 01 Hornets and Others

by Al Sarrantonio

  "What can you do about it?" Biber asked, and when Johann replied that he did not know, Biber begged him to stay where he was and that he would return in a few minutes with coffee for the two of them. "It might not be good for you to go to the coffee room as you are, yet; let's talk about this."

  Biber returned a few moments later, with a stealthy motion, peering behind him and carefully closing the door behind him, and sat down before Johann. "No one else knows," he said. "I have a plan. I've notified two acquaintances of mine, and we should have you set up grandly in no time at all."

  Johann sat up in alarm. "What do you mean!"

  "Why, we're going to make you famous, of course." Biber was smiling, with an open, convinced look on his face.

  "No!" Johann said, "I mean, you can't do that!"

  Biber looked puzzled. "What did you plan to do?"

  "I had no idea," said Johann; "I was hoping, as Ilse said to me this morning, to merely continue as I always have. It may be difficult for quite a while, but I'm sure that after the furor dies down I'll be able to run my affairs as always."

  "I'm afraid there's little chance of that," and there was a trace of pity in his voice. "A few days of your walking around the city, carrying on your business as usual, and you will no doubt become a celebrity. The papers will be after you before you count to ten."

  Johann cringed inwardly, and took a nervous taste of coffee; and Biber noted with amazement how the coffee went into his friend's mouth and disappeared, while he could see straight through his friend's lips, face, head to the filing cabinets across the room.

  "The only way out I can see for you," Biber continued, "is to either become a total recluse immediately, which is bound to drive you mad; or, to make the most of your celebrity. Shock the public into accepting you as you are and make them love you as something special; otherwise, when they discover you they may consider you a monster. I really don't see any other alternative." He looked with concern at Johann, or rather through him.

  Johann fought for control, since the basically reticent nature he possessed shrank in terror at the idea of exposing himself to public scrutiny. "I'm a freak, then?" he said, through clenched teeth, fighting back tears. He vaguely wondered what his tears would look like: would they be droplets of salt or small crystal pellets?—when he had passed water that morning things had been normal enough.

  "Johann," Biber said softly, evident worry in his voice; "you must try to be strong. Your friends will not desert you. Just stick by me a little longer."

  Johann looked up at his friend; he discovered that his tears, which were flowing readily now, were of salt water after all. "I suppose I must put myself in your hands," he said. "You know I wouldn't be able to handle something of this sort myself."

  Biber squeezed Johann's shoulder, noting the rock hardness beneath the glass man's jacket. "Good. I have made plans, and soon—"

  Just then there came a discreet knock on the cubicle door. Biber bounced up excitedly. "In fact," he said, smiling down on Johann, "I believe part of the solution to your problem has arrived. He went to the door and opened it a crack, peering out; when he saw who was there he opened the door just enough to allow the visitor to enter and then closed and locked it behind him.

  The newcomer—a short, balding fellow with tired eyes who, as Biber introduced him, worked for a research company that, Johann thought wryly, might very well have drained him of most of his thoughts—peered at Johann intensely and then, to Johann's horror, began to poke at him with the end of a pencil. "A robot?" he inquired of Biber, who quickly restrained him and explained that Johann was, indeed, a man and was, indeed, the amazing thing Biber had called him over to see.

  "Remarkable," said the man, who once again began poking at Johann with his pencil.

  The sum effect of the man's examination of Johann was that it was ascertained that Johann was, indeed, made of glass. "A particularly fine glass," the scientist explained, "comparable to the finest lead crystal. I remain at a loss, though, to explain the otherwise normality of all your bodily functions; as a matter of fact, your body is acting as if it were not made of glass at all; but it most certainly is." The scientist clapped his hands gleefully. "I haven't been so excited since my student days! There is really nothing else for me to tell you, unless you would be willing to hand yourself over to a group of experts." He jotted a note on a piece of paper on Johann's desk, folded it and put it in his shirt pocket. "I think that should be arranged immediately—only a true laboratory could uncover your little secrets, my friend."

  "No!" said Johann, who was visibly shaken. "I.. .just could not go through with something like that. But thank you for offering your help." Biber picked up the opportunity to usher the scientist out of the office, promising to get back to him. When they were alone he sought to calm Johann down.

  "Don't worry, Johann Pinzer, we won't let you be handed over to those wolves. I just thought it would be best to make sure that your condition was a true one. I think it's time to call in my media friend and begin to make you famous."

  Johann recoiled in horror. "Karl, I don't want that! I told you, I wish to remain anonymous. I just want to lead my life as I always have!"

  "And I've told you, dear friend, that that is impossible. I think the time is now to make the most you possibly can out of this whole thing." There was a wild spark in Biber's eyes.

  Johann began to straighten the things on his desk compulsively. "I'm leaving, Karl. Going away. Please, I don't need your help anymore."

  "But Johann, the press has already been alerted! You'll be famous by nightfall!"

  A vision rose up before Johan of toy manufacturers, greeting card companies, cereal producers fighting for the use of his name and notoriety to sell their products. Talk show hosts battling for the right to ask him embarrassing questions. He knew, he knew deep down within his soul, that celebrity would kill him.

  "I'm going away, Karl," he said, and before his friend could reply he was through the cubicle door and on the back stairs leading from the building.

  Johann began to slowly and carefully make his way home, and had nearly made it to his building when he noticed a passerby with a folded copy of the afternoon paper. It was creased so that the headline was exposed, and read: "Man of Glass Seen Roaming City!"

  "Already," he thought, and covered his face immediately.

  He could not get into his building; as he approached it he became aware of noises on the street in front of it. Peeking around a corner, he discovered that a crowd was forming; they were all staring up at his bedroom window on the third floor. Some held placards reading "The Glass Man Is Here" or "We Love the Glass Man." And among them, in the center of the crush, he noticed Biber, who was standing with another man whose looks Johann instantly disliked. This was obviously Biber's media friend, and Johann could tell by looking at the two of them that some sort of scheme had already been formed for his entrapment.

  Johann turned quickly, meaning to make his way to the back of the building, but as he rounded the corner into the alleyway he ran straight into another crowd which was waiting at that entrance. He pulled his hat down low and his collar up, and began to back off, but suddenly there was a shout and Johann looked up to see part of the throng running toward him. He turned and sprinted back into the street.

  A cry immediately went up, and Johann glanced behind to see that Biber was charging after him, followed closely by the ad man and a good portion of the mob. "Johann, wait!" Biber shouted after him.

  He ran toward the underground railway, knowing that the crowd was gaining on him and that his only hope for escape lay in getting lost in a crowded, busy area. He thought fleetingly of Ilse; he hoped that she was unharmed and that she would not worry too greatly about him—but these thoughts were quickly pushed aside by the immediacy of the mob, which had swelled in number, picking up new membership as it surged along, and which was closing the gap on him. They were shouting slogans, "Hooray for the Glass Man!" and such, though Johann could also det
ect the inaudible snarl of a pack of hunting dogs. Johann was quickly winded; he could feel his chest heave like a bellows, and wondered briefly if such overexertion would cause him to burst from within and crack into a million tiny fragments. But he continued to run.

  He ran down onto the platform and reached a train just as the doors were closing; but as he sighed with relief, ready to handle the few passengers around him who were staring strangely, the doors reopened and the mob burst in. Johann ran from car to car—one man who grabbed at him as he ran past looked startlingly like Biber's scientist friend—Johann saw a predator's look in the man's eyes, the look of the experimenter glaring at his pinned and drugged rat—but Johann pushed the man aside and reached the first car as the train came to a halt in the next station and the doors flew open.

  As Johann leaped from the train he looked back to see a solid horde pouring, like hot lava, from every car in the train and flowing towards him. The sight was both electrifying and frightening. Johann ran to the stairs, knocking aside a man and an old woman, and only as he reached the street did he realize what a horrid mistake he had made.

  He had reached the center square of the city, only to find a huge assembly there, waiting for him. A "Glass Man" rally had been arranged, and thousands of people were milling about, waiting for the festivities to begin. Johann gasped in horror when his eyes fell on a dais that had been erected with a huge throne in its center, made of crystal. A gilt-lettered sign perched above it, with THE GLASS MAN emblazoned on it in silver.

  Johann covered his face with his hands and tried to drift inconspicuously into the crowd—forgetting that his hands were also made of glass and offered no protection whatsoever. He slowly made his way toward an open doorway. He bumped into a vendor, a man selling buttons made of clear plastic that said "Glass Man" on them, and as he instinctively turned away in apology the man cried in recognition. "He's here! He's here!" the man shouted, holding his card of buttons aloft. A panic ensued.

  Johann dove for the doorway, turning quickly through the revolving doors of the building closest to him, losing some of his outer clothing to grasping hands. He dashed for the banks of elevators at the end of the corridor, and as he reached them the horde behind him, impatient with entering through the spinning doors and frightfully weighted with pressure from behind, threw itself through the glass windows of the building. The people in front screamed, those behind stepping over them past the jagged shards of window and after Johann. Johann ran into an open elevator, then nearly fainted when he realized that the doors would not close in time to save him.

  He quickly removed his clothes, dropping them in a pile at the back of the elevator, and stepped out just as the first of the mob rushed in. He was not noticed, and as a cry of dismay went up behind him he moved slowly and invisibly along the row of elevators to the last open one on the end. A woman with an ecstatic, converted look on her face brushed past him close enough to touch; Johann held his breath as she wandered on. He backed into the elevator and the doors closed in front of him.

  He heard another shout of dismay and it occurred to him that the doors might be forced back open, but the car began to rise. Pushing the button for the top floor, he noted that it was fifty flights up: this, then, was one of the highest buildings in the city. He knew he would probably have to climb above that floor since the mob would use both stairs and elevators to follow him up as quickly as it could.

  As the doors hissed open on the top floor, Johann stepped from the elevator and noticed that the lights on the rest of the elevator bank indicated that all the cars were nearing his floor. He searched for the emergency stairwell and pulled the door open as the first of the elevators was discharging its passengers. There was a bolt on the door and he locked it behind him.

  The click of the bolt sliding into place obviously drew someone's attention, and as Johann made his way up the dimly lit stairs the door was set upon. Johann prayed that it would hold. He ran up the steps three at a time and nearly stumbled; "Is this how I am to end?" he thought, "a pile of glass splinters on a back stairway?"—but he regained his balance and continued upwards. There was a shorter stairway at the end of the climb, ending in a blank concrete wall with a steel ladder bolted to it; and seeing no alternative, with the poundings on the door below still audible, Johann heaved himself up and through the trap door in the ceiling.

  He found himself on the roof of the building. The tarred surface crackled under his glass footsteps, and a chill breeze whistled through and around the fissures in his body as he walked to the edge and looked down.

  The throng below, as one, raised its myriad heads to him and began to shout wildly. Babies and placards were held aloft, and a huge banner, a full three blocks in length, was unfurled, reading simply, "THE GLASS MAN BELONGS TO ALL." The crowd was immense, swelling into the streets, on top of cars, covering every inch of ground down every street as far as the eye could see. A chant went up as Johann looked down on them; it started as a whisper among the multitude and quickly grew in intensity to a frightful roar: "Glass Man, Glass Man, Glass Man, Glass Man!" Johann looked down at all this and trembled, thinking he must surely break apart under the intensity of that intonation. He began to sway back and forth on the edge of the building.

  People, he saw, were now actually scaling, like obscene mountain climbers, the side of the building to get to him. And now, there came a noise from behind, and he twisted his head to see that Ise, his Ilse, was rushing toward him over the rooftop, followed by a group of chanting people. Johann began to cry out to her, but the sound gagged in his throat when he saw the wild look in her eyes and she said, "Johann, go to them!"

  Johann gave a silent scream, and twisted away from her. More for support than in greeting, he threw out his arms and the chant instantly ceased. There were a huge, echoing hush.

  Johann stood suspended between sky and roof, his arms thrust out before him, and in that picture-frame of a moment he cried out, above all of them.

  "I am not made of glass!"

  At that instant, his arms out before him, he saw that, indeed, he was not made of glass. His arms were covered with smooth flesh, his hands

  of the same, their nails and cuticles plainly, lucidly, visible. A gasp of joy escaped his throat as he looked down at his body to discover that it was a plain and naked flesh of which he was composed.

  "I am not made of glass!" he screamed again.

  There was a moment of utter silence, and then the hush broke below, and a thousand voices, a million, spoke as one, beginning once more to chant in rhythmic cadence, "Glass Man, Glass Man, Glass Man, GLASS MAN!" Johann's own cries were drowned in the midst of the roar. The climbers, Johann saw, were once again advancing toward him like spiders up the side of the building, and, behind him, Ilse and the others were coming toward him, arms outstretched; Ilse was once more pleading, "Johann, my glass man, go to them!"

  The trembling hands that Johann brought to his face, he saw with sudden and absolute horror, were once more made of clear glass. He turned to Ise and pleaded, "What is happening?"

  "Johann, don't you see?" she said, her hands, and the hands of those around her reaching out to his crystal body, "You are the Glass Man!"

  "NO! I AM NOT—"

  His scream was lost, a molecule of water in a sea of intonation: "GLASS MAN! GLASS MAN!" Their hands were on him then, and he was lifted high overhead, and passed over the edge of the roof and down the side of the building.

  In the midst of the madness around him Johann had a moment of lucid, beautiful vision: his fingers, dangling before his eyes in the bright lights of the city square, gave off the sharp rainbow colors of a prism.

  And then his hand was yanked away, and he saw below, waiting hungrily to meet him, the silent salute of a million hammers held aloft.

  Violets

  The air was wet with perfume. I saw Lonnigan ahead of me, as if through a fog, though there was no mist in the greenhouse, only the thick, damp smell of flowers. "Lonnigan!" I said hoarsely, the word
s falling leaden to the ground as they left my mouth. I had difficulty in breathing—as though my lungs were coated with pleuritic fluid. "Lonnigan—don't go on ahead without me!"

  But Lonnigan, I knew, was already possessed; he merely waved a hand at my words without turning around, and plunged ahead into the deeper recesses of the glass room.

  Flowers, violets, nearly to the glass-paned ceiling. They were thick as the air around me, their stalks slicked bright green with moisture, their petals curling stiffly from deep purple buds. Through the fog my mind had become I thought they turned to watch me as I moved—and they regarded me with nothing short of malevolence.

  Ahead of me, Lonnigan was disappearing into the thicker recesses of the greenhouse, where a veritable canopy of green thickened against the far wall like a miniature forest, blotting out the sun

  "Lonnigan—!"

  Then I heard him scream.

  It was not a natural sound. It was more like the sound a distressed animal, faced with an unknown assailant, might utter. There was a thick grunt of surprise, and then a strangling cry that rose quickly and then, just as quickly, died.

  I could not see Lonnigan ahead of me.

  And then I did a cowardly thing—the most cowardly of my life.

  I turned, even as the last dull sound of Lonnigan's distress ahead of me sounded, and, even as the end of that gargling cry sounded, I made my way in a panic out of the greenhouse.

  Coughing for air, pushing aside thick sapped vines that appeared to block my exit, striving not to lose consciousness, I pushed my way out of that wicked room and toward clear air and sunlight.

  And even as I did, the most curious thing happened, because momentarily, even as I reached the metal door, which was slick with moisture, the sky seemed to go black over my head, blotting out the glass panes of the roof completely, and as I looked down at something which seemed to stay my hand on the door, I saw something which had been holding me, something green and thin and strong and shaped very much like a human hand, pull back away from my arm, with a motion very much like the pulling of taffy.