Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu (43 page)

But back to that afternoon. I’d
taken twenty boys that day. I hadn’t delivered them back to
headquarters myself, but had captured them all personally – by
various means – before handing them to those further down the line,
who piled them into the Jeeps like frightened cows to the
slaughter. They wanted us, yes, but they were also afraid.

Sphinx was special that way.
Very. Let me recall the moment.

I was coming down a side street
towards a row of houses all on fire. I smelled burning flesh, and
from the bodies cooling on the lawns, I knew some of our tribe had
been at work. They had obviously left the area, however, and it was
just the burning houses and myself, alone.

Except for Sphinx.

He stood near the corner of the
block, at the end of a driveway. Next to him was a white mailbox,
perfectly white, no marks, no soot, and on it a street number,
printed silver on black: 21. Which was, I judged later, a sign I
had to take him; he was, after all, the twenty-first boy of the
day.

He was sixteen or thereabouts,
I judged, not quite fully grown, with dark brown hair in loose
curls that rested on his head like a crown. His face, dark with
large deep brown eyes, would have been handsome had not his
expression been so…
blank
.

It wasn’t only his expression
either. It was
him
. There was a row of houses on fire. He
appeared neither frightened nor shocked. He didn’t seem angry
either. Not a flicker of emotion on his face or in the psychic
ambient. Normally I could feel fear. He had none.

This didn’t change even when I
approached him. He didn’t even look at me!

He was staring at the fire. I
would have said he was bewitched or filled with wonder, but as far
as I could tell, he wasn’t filled with anything. He was just
looking.

Maybe it’s shock
, I
thought to myself.

When I was right up beside him
and he still hadn’t looked at me, I adopted his posture: arms
crossed, eyes up to the blaze. Maybe I’d see something amidst the
flames and understand what had the boy so transfixed.

I don’t think Sphinx and I saw
or felt the same things. I saw the peeling vinyl siding – smelled
it too. When part of a nearby house crumpled, I saw the grim
remains of a girl’s bedroom, soot pouring out while the walls still
stood out pink with painted white clouds. Was that a body I saw on
the remains of the bed, or did I only imagine it?

I watched these things without
a sense of guilt but instead, a sense of inevitability. I was like
most of us, to a large extent happy that change had come at last.
The old ways had come to an end. We were the new thing, and so even
if there were old things we liked, we had to destroy them. Most of
them anyway. Destroying a suburb and taking the boys? It was only
just.

Sphinx didn’t budge a bit in a
whole five minutes, I don’t think. I’m not even sure he blinked in
those days. He wasn’t normal.

I stopped looking at the fire
and studied him.
Not normal.
But…
what?

Some, I suppose, would think it
peculiar I spent any time at all studying this lone boy. “Either
you grab ‘em or you kill ‘em – you don’t just stare at ‘em!” Well,
I say, these people weren’t there, facing a boy they just couldn’t
decide about. Should I take him or…?

Finally, to break the deadlock,
I reached out and took hold of his hand.

The shock of it ran up my arm.
I didn’t see feeling in his face and I hadn’t, before touching him,
been able to sense anything from him either. But holding his hand,
I felt a power in him, a kind of strength made potent because it
was so self-contained, like a hot glowing coal on a sheet of ice in
the dark.

He finally looked at me. And he
was still not afraid. I tugged him away from the mailbox, into the
street. I ran. Holding my hand, he ran with me.

Running, Running, Real Hand

Sphinx

Burning. Running. Legs burning.
Muscles though, not like houses. Lungs burning. More houses
burning. Black dirty air. Everything burning and hot.

My legs were going. Going!
Everything was rushing up to me. Burning house far away, then
burning house closer, then burning house gone. The blur of the road
went on and on, endless. Look at the road, look at the road!

With the houses on both sides,
and the road going on and on, it was like a tube and we were inside
it. Running down the tube. Tube full of smoke. Left, right, up a
hill. Sometimes we stopped.

We? Oh, yes. We…

His hand around my hand was a
real thing. A
real
thing. Real hand. Real boy. I was
running, but he was there with me and didn’t go away. Real as my
own breathing. Hot sweaty hand. Running, running, real hand.

Running was that moment. Hand
was that moment. But earlier, other moments. I remember now. Brain
makes loops around moments like yarn and I pull them back.
Moments…

Wasn’t running that morning.
Opposite. Lying in bed. Nobody there, just me.

The sun was there though.
Shining white, didn’t look hot, although it was hot on the bed. The
glass on the window was hot. Burning sparkles in the glass and
white glowing hot sheets. White walls. White sun, burning against
the clouds. Burning… smell?

The nurse ran in.
Something,
something, something
, she said. She shook me.
Something,
something, something
, she screamed. I heard her. Go? Run?
Wraeththu?

She left and I saw. Sun not so
white. Gray smoke. Noises in the hall. Sun still there. Still hot.
No nurse. Sun lower.
Something, something, something
…

Oh. Now I knew: Run away, I’m
setting you free, run from the Wraeththu!

Just What We Need

Heart

I had fun running with Sphinx.
It reminded me of when I’d been younger, out with my dog, running
through the streets together in another city, what seemed like
years ago. With all the other boys, I’d got them into a Jeep and
had them taken off, but with him, we ran until we were gasping,
stopping to breathe, then starting up again.

It was during these breaks that
I began to get an inkling of just what was going on with Sphinx. He
hadn’t said a word to me since I’d seen him, although I’d spoken to
him. I didn’t think he was deaf, though. He wasn’t shocked or
scared either. He just didn’t react to things, at least not the
normal way. When we’d stop to rest, he would usually just stare at
stuff. Sometimes I’d follow the path of his eyes and find it’d be a
fence or a stray dog. But sometimes I just couldn’t figure out what
he was seeing; he was looking out into open space or an empty field
or just the road, even though it was empty.

Maybe he’s just crazy
, I
decided.
Great, just what we need, more crazies. Manifest will
be
so
thrilled.
By the time I was thinking these
thoughts, however, we were almost back at headquarters. I didn’t
have it in me to turn back. Or abandon my new find, even if he
was
a crazy.

Our headquarters was a beauty,
an old high school. The thing was built like a fortress, with only
small narrow windows and what was really funny, you had to cross a
kind of concrete drawbridge to get in the main doors. Inside the
walls were all painted cinderblock, the floors gray linoleum. Very
institutional. Very prison-like. Very much the refuse of Humanity.
Revelling in the juxtaposition, we found it perfect for our
needs.

I walked in with Sphinx beside
me, pretty much like a trusting dog. It was kind of dim in the
lobby because it was afternoon and too soon to turn on the
emergency power we’d rigged up. Not that I needed the light; I knew
my way around.

I nodded to the three guards on
duty. “Last one for today?” asked one of them, Mica.

I nodded.

“Good. Manifest wants to see
you.”

I studied the har’s face, to
see if I could read anything from it, but he simply looked to be
conveying an order. “I’ll see him after I take care of this one,” I
said, indicating Sphinx.

As I started down the stairs,
Mica took off to relay the message up to the “principal’s
office.”

To get Sphinx where he needed
to go, we had to go through the cafeteria. This had been left
pretty much as is, since it was just as accommodating to us as it
had been to high school kids (which a lot of us had recently been,
come to think of it). There were lots of hara in there as we passed
through. Most of them were done eating and were basically just
kicking back, playing cards, some playing music. A few came up to
me and said stuff, just heys and whatnot, a couple asking about
Sphinx, trying to talk to him. He didn’t act like he heard any of
it though; he was just blank-facedly looking at stuff. I think
that’s when I first started getting an idea of his name.

Anyway, once we passed through
there, it was up some stairs and through this sort of bridge over
to the gym. This was the area we took care of two of the harshest
aspects of our life as Wraeththu: all the inceptions and a lot of
battle training. It was the ideal place really, with a couple of
weight rooms, big storage rooms formerly used for equipment, some
offices, a big gym area and of course, locker rooms that were just
as a good as a jail.

Originally the locker rooms had
been divided into girls and boys, both underneath the gym, on
opposite sites. We’d made some modifications to this; now there was
one set of rooms for human boys (the “waiting room”) and another
for boys actually getting incepted (the “changing room”). Sphinx
followed me down to the waiting room, docile as a lamb.

Down there, the electric lights
had been given some power, and in the dim light I saw a good fifty
boys piled into the changing area, sitting on benches and on the
concrete floor. All of them were naked. There were only about ten
hara guarding them because all but the passive ones had been
drugged up a bit, or mesmerized, into staying quiet. It is true,
however, that if any of the boys were to step out of line, those
hara would’ve taught them a quick lesson, probably fatal.

After I’d located the boys I
found that day and determined they were all OK and apparently no
worse off than when I’d found them, I had a word with one of the
guards. “This is my last one for today,” I said, indicating Sphinx.
“He won’t give you any trouble, I promise.”

The guard nodded and stepped
away.

I have no idea what exactly I
said to Sphinx, but when I went to go, he suddenly reached out and
grabbed my hand.

Again, there was the
connection. He was a hot glowing coal, he really was. And up my arm
I felt his message, without words but still clear:
You are real,
real, real…

Pulled Me, Pushed Me

Sphinx

I had his hand but then I
didn’t have it anymore and I was alone. Alone with lots of people.
They were everywhere, spread out on the floor, sitting up, leaning
against the wall. Too many people. I had been alone so long. I
liked to be alone!

Something touched me on the
shoulder. Person touching me.
Something, something,
something
, he said, jerking his head. Pulling on me. Over
there, down, down…

I didn’t want to go. It was a
pile of people almost. I didn’t want to go down there. But he
pulled me, pushed me, pulled me, pushed me. I didn’t fight, but I
didn’t want to be moved.
Something, something, something
, he
shouted. More pushing. People moved away on the floor, I felt
it.

Finally I crashed down. Pain.
My head hit something hard. Bleeding. Pain around my eyes, somebody
turned me over. Somebody grabbing my shoulders, hard, shaking me.
Angry at me
, I realized. The power of touch. I wiped the
blood away from my eyes and closed them. If I closed my eyes, he
wouldn’t see me, and couldn’t be angry with me.

The Principal’s Office

Heart

After that I went up to the
principal’s office. Ha ha, what a joke we had going on there.
Actually being called up there
was
similar to actual high
school because it either meant you were in trouble or that you had
done something really good and were going to get commended. I had
been doing pretty well lately in my meetings with Manifest – he
seemed to have taken an interest in me – and walking back through
the labyrinth of hallways towards the school’s administrative
offices, I felt confident the meeting would be quick and to the
point. That is, unless Manifest had something up his sleeve.

Manifest was an interesting
character, which of course he’d have to be, to keep control over
our
lot. We were certainly a lot worse behaved than any high
schoolers. To him, however, we weren’t any trouble. At first glance
you might not have thought it, because of his pretty hair and
refined manners – product of the privileged class, I always
surmised – but Manifest was a tough customer, who could go pretty
much from shaking your hand to hacking it off, if you pissed him
off. We all tried not to piss him off, but my efforts had actually
been working, and as I just said, we’d been getting on lately, my
position moving up in the tribal hierarchy.

As I approached the main door
to the office suite, one of Manifest’s guards, Thorn, spotted me
and cocked his head meaningfully towards the interior.

“What’s up?” I whispered, once
I’d reached the door.

“I don’t know, but he’s
impatient about something,” Thorn told me. “All day long he’s been
nervous. I can feel it and it’s like ants crawling all over
me.”

“You don’t know what it is?” I
asked.

“No, and when Luster had to
nerve to ask,” he said, referring to Manifest’s second-in-command,
“all he said was that something important was going to happen
today. So far as I know, though, nothing has.”