By Pinlighter
She is not close, and he can not see where she
has gone.
They have fled from the light of the distant
fireholes
into the shadow
of rocks, and the Land without the Helm is very
dark so that at first
he blunders. But soon his eyes adapt and he
manages to see the
loom of nearby objects well enough to move
silently.
He expects her
touch and her voice every second.
He is Out in a way he never was before. The
little
movements of
air in the eternal night brush his
face. Any thing might
creep up behind him. His head is bare to the
freezing air, and
the proximity sensors of the Helm are not there to
protect him.
He keeps fearing something will light on the back
of his
neck, keeps
looking round. Hours pass.
Once some thing does touch him: he smashes it
with one
sweep of the
dyskos, and sees in the glare that it is a
thinlimbed spidery crab
thing, too small and weak to be dangerous to him,
exploring its
environment with feelers. He would scarcely
have noticed it in
the past. There is a scuttling as
dozens of others flee
from him. He steps back, touching some
slippery thing, and
kindled to rage leaps away. He rushes toward
whatever it is that
may be stalking him in the Night, defies it.
But there was
nothing there, just a slime of lichen over stone.
He can just tell where the host is gathered,
still
watching for their
reappearance from the shadows. He can
half-sense their gazes upon
him and he can hear them and even smell them a
little, but he can only
see them very very dimly. They are not
yet moving on.
Surely, she will come soon.
*****************
At last there is the vaguest shifting of movement
in the
distant
armoured men, the occasional gleam of fire
reflected from metal, the
rumour of preparation. They are starting to
move in an organised
way. They are leaving him. He instantly
decides he must follow.
*****************
When he tries to return to the host, after forty
hours
in the silent
night, they refuse to let him back. They
stare at him in ranked
order with their weapons ready and ignore the Word
he utters. His
Helm is lost and by then he cannot go back for
it. He
realises he is irreversibly classified as abhuman: he
cannot rejoin his
peers even as a refugee. He lingers, not far from
them, trying to trace
names and remembered
faces in the silent puppets of grey metal,
studying this slope of the
shoulder or that turn of the hand. Memory
has returned and he
recalls his past comrades keenly. Surely
that is Aryd? And the
tall woman under her burden of tablets, is she
Erre? And is that
man who walks with the longer stride Jointe, he
who spoke so well in
the last doomed debate? The days of
their Preparation fill
his mind, and his recall of each sworn companion
is a sharp separate
flavour. But the pains and hopes of
that time were followed
by the dull nightmare of walking the Land under
the Helm's suppression,
when all oaths were forgotten and all friendships
dissolved. Who
they are under their Helms can not matter
now. They were
there and full of life, and now they are here and
their names are
meaningless.
When at last he creeps away he hears behind him a
hiss
of breath and
the sound of footsteps. He tries to
speak to her, but she
is silent. She lets him get close
enough to feel her breath
on his face. She touches his breastplate,
once, and then she
goes. He tries to follow but is
instantly lost.
Wearily, he returns to tracking the
host.
What is
she? Why does she fear him
so? Fantasies of
love and tenderness stir in his mind, but a deeper
warning beats from
ancient tales and from the doctrines of
Preparation. She called
him out of safe obedience, for what reason?
To rescue him?
For love? Or for purposes of her
own? She lives in
the Night.
When next the host sleeps, he huddles under rocks
close
to them.
He manages to contrive a hood from his cloak to
pillow and protect his
head. The fabric will not tear or yield to
any claw, and the
scurrying insect-crabs cannot chew through
it. He already regards
them as no threat to him, mere vermin, but it is
hard to find
sleep.
He wakes and finds she is with him, pressed
against his
armour, wrapped
in his insulated cloak and warm. But when he
moves to touch her
she pushes him back and leaves him. She is
very strong.
*****************
She is footsteps and the sound of breathing and a
touch.
She sees in the Night far better than
him. She hardly ever
speaks.
She lives in the Night. He cannot find her
when
she does not wish
to be found.
After he has learned he must never, never, pursue
her,
she
comes to him
from time to time. She stinks of
the Night and of new
proteins from the Land, metabolised and exuded
through her
pores.
She brings him berries and squirming things and
fungus but he will not yet submit to eat filth,
for the legends say
that to eat of the Land is to become one with
it. In exchange for
the food he will not touch she gobbles his food
tablets eagerly.
Their hands touch.
She does not speak to him. She does not
respond
when he utters
the Word. Her beautiful face shows no more
expression than a
mask.
She is a survivor of an earlier hegira, he
reasons, an
earlier attempt
to colonist the northern lowlands where human life
may be possible, now
gone feral. Computing time from the date of
the previous Pulse of
Migration he realizes that she and the handful
with her must have lived
at least five years in this Night, and he is
awed. But he is
still utterly alone, and she is not alone.
He hears her talking
to the others of her kind, and sometimes he sees
them with her, but
they do not talk to him or come close.
Only she comes
occasionally. The others vanish if he
comes upon them with
her. Only she will endure his presence.
Whenever he attempts to return to the host, they
attack
him. They
drive him away again and again. They
do not follow him when
he flees but they do not permit him to approach,
and once a slug from
the remaining falcion shatters on his breastplate,
laying him flat and
stunned. He is truly part of the
Night.
And once he has to fight some stalking beast for
the
night
people. But when it is dead they do
not thank him or let
him join them.
*****************
They follow the dwindling host north-east, beside
the
river of fire,
back to the frozen desert uplands.
Perhaps if they find the
easternmost end of the vulcanism they may skirt it
and reach the great
Slope which legend says leads down to fertile,
human-habitable,
volcano-lighted, lands, and there they may survive
and build another
humanity. They may yet survive, and
find Light.
The mission
of this hegira,
this
Holy Migration, is to seek out a
path to the northern
lowlands. Other missions
have been sent out in the legended past, to the
East, to the West, and
to the South, and each of these have returned
messages of horror to the
watchers in their high Tower. But from those
who went to the
North on Andros' ancient path has come only
silence.
This is compatible with many scenarios including
complete extinction,
but it is possible that some survivors have found
the deep Land of
which he spoke. No sacrifice is too
great to achieve
that.
Once, the legends say, long before the Redoubt
was
built, all that was
left of true humanity was sixty people, a remnant
of a remnant who
survived. The legends are true. The
estimate is confirmed
by genetic studies which map the expansion of a
tiny founder population
that reached the bottom of the Valley in the days
when the Sun still
shone. From this handful came the
Great Redoubt and Her
hundreds of millions, and the prophets cry that
such a feat may now be
repeated, in the deeps of the Land. So
was formed the Guild
of the Last Migration, sworn to find a way.
The stakes are tiny,
a few hundreds of the Redoubt's millions against
another eternity for
Man, and reasons and ways have been found to
gather those few hundreds,
by Honor, by lies, by love, through reward,
through the desire of
rivals, by faith, by politics and by dreams.
Yet with every chiliad that passes the Land is
more
terrible, and the
deep refuges, if they exist, are far below the
horizon of broadcast
power, far beyond the range of any possible
land-traversing machines
depending on stored power. Machines
are too fragile and
weak to reach them: only human beings can travel
so far, as Andros
walked that Night, alone. And so they go by the
hundred, blessed
by the popes of the Guild, armored and shielded
and Prepared as Andros
never was in those ancient days, yet as helpless
as he was in the
Night.
*****************
He is sure that some horror will come to drive
him
insane. But
nothing comes. Once he sees the Lights
again, and freezes
in the night, baring the capsule in his wrist, but
the Lights pass
on. Perhaps he is lucky. Or perhaps he
is degraded to the
status of a beast, so that he does not need the
disguise and shielding
of the Helm.
The lost ones have survived for years. How?
Sometimes he looks back at the Redoubt, and
sometimes
they rise high
enough above the general background relief of the
high lands that he
cannot avoid seeing one or more of the five
Watchers that surround
Her. There is no Helm to shield his eyes now
and their atropaic
gazes suck at his mind like sores, but at this
distance they are not
fatal, particularly since their reality-altering
perception is
concentrated on the Redoubt and not directed at
him. Of
course he is never foolish enough to look at one
directly.
He can survive. But there is nothing for
him but
the cold and
silence, the host a little ahead of him in the
Night, and the other
lost night people around him; and sometimes,
sometimes, her breathing
and her touch.
********************
They scavenge the dead. There are no more
creatures to fight here
but the wounded still fall out from the host from
time to
time. There are no doctors and delays
cannot be
allowed. A man who is sick or whose wounds
do not heal as he
walks will fall behind and be lost, perhaps two or
three days after a
fight. From his time under the Helm he has
vague memories of one
or other of his comrades vanishing without obvious
reason, some time
after this or that battle, and now he sees what
happens to these
men.
The first time, he goes to help. He finds
the
night people
gathered round the sick, crawling, limping,
armoured, warrior, waiting,
not helping, not attacking, just waiting, for him
to faint or die so
they may move in. He feels a complete hatred
for them. But
he cannot attack or heal or mediate or aid.
There is absolutely
nothing he can do.
When the wounded man falls at last one knocks his
dyskos
away with a
club and the others gather. The Helm
he picks up much later
will not register him as human or mate with his
armour and is useless
to him.
He sees also with sure certainty something he has
only
suspected before now;
all the night people are women; no men have
survived in the Night, none
at all.
*****************
That sleep-time she comes to him again, and this
time
her hands are
reaching for the catches of his armour and blood
is on her
breath. She is persistent and blows do
not stop her, and
though physically he could overcome her, he wants
this, too. In a
hollow between rocks she makes him unarmour and
she drains him of seed:
and when he recovers from the spasm of sex he
realises that the other
lost people are there a little distance away,
gathered around them in
the Night. He expects death then, he
sees himself as more
wounded prey, he expects a knife or a rock, he
closes his eyes and does
not call the dyskos to his hand, but they do not
kill him. She
licks up spilled ejaculate from his groin and they
leave him in the
dark, and she goes away with them, away but not
far away.
They are not far away, but they do not let him
get
close, ever.
They have left a small pile of salvaged food
tablets
which he takes and
stores. He clothes himself again and checks
his armour and
huddles alone in the Night.
*****************
He dreams true dreams of the Redoubt, now, and
his mind
is full of
memories. He remembers one he
loved. He remembers how
he dared to speak to her for the first time,
snatching a chance to be
with her, and how her soul rose to her throat and
a blush flowered
there. He remembers the first time she
permitted his touch
and how she trembled in his hands. He
remembers their hopes of
bliss, and he remembers their parting: and he
wakes and sees the
night-woman squatting on the ground near him, as
still as a lizard, her
eyes moving and shifting in the dim flares of
light and never
resting.
How long have these women lived in the Night,
preying on
and
scavenging from the hegiras?
Have some of them, even, been born
Out here? And are women stronger than men,
stronger yet somehow
more vulnerable to becoming utterly one with the
Night? The hegira is a
colonisation mission and there are an equal number
of women
in the host, but he can not think of them as
female. Love
and sex were suppressed in them all along with
their humanity before
they were sent Out. But now love
has returned to him,
endlessly seeking in the night, and dragged him
from the ignorant dark
into knowledge, and found him a mate.
He understands, now, that she and those with her
are not
human.
They have survived here only because they have
lost all humanity and
there is nothing in them for a pneumavore to sorb: just as
his humanity
was artificially suppressed in an attempt to make
him invisible to the
Eaters. But the intention of the Preparation
was that his human
nature and memory would return when the Helm and
its blocks were
removed, and if the night people have lost their
souls they have lost
them a second time and forever.
Yet, they come from out of
humanity, and now he remembers a thousand names
for them, whispered to
the cradle, tallied by sciences so ancient they
are become parable and
legend. She held up the mirror to him, and
he filled it with need
and mistook that for love. So it has
always been. All
that it has ever been necessary for the sidhe, the lilim, the kaallikanzari,
to
do, is to hold up the mirror to a human
being.
People fill the universe around them with
humanity, they insist that a
rag, a bone, and a hank of hair has a personality,
so how can something
with an
intellect and a face and a human body be refused
as much even when it
lacks a soul? And so victims have
insisted that the magical
stranger they love has feelings and a spirit like
unto them: so they
have donated the humanity the facultative social
predators and brood
predators lack; and so the abhumans have
thriven on the borders
of human kind since they first emerged, long
before the fall of Night,
splitting off from humanity to consume humanity
again and again in
clade after parasitic clade.
It is no surprise that the same pattern should be
followed by the lost
survivors of the hegiras,
especially since the most truly human are the
most vulnerable to the Eaters and do not survive
long Out here. A
new species of abhuman is being bred here:
succubae, inhumae, vampires
of the Land, thriving under an evolutionary regime
of terrible severity
and beginning to breed. He remembers the
endless prohibitions,
the shibboleths, the Word, the Censors, the
exhortations not
to fall
from humanity which he never quite
understood, but understands
now,
for he is mated to one and may become one.
He has mixed flesh and
spirit, embraced a body as cruel as iron and a
face that is a mask over
no living love.
So, will he finally become one of the night
people,
purified of
soul? Will they accept others, and wait in
the Night till another hegira comes
through here? Will he call from the Night,
call to
some woman, Take
off your Helm??
And his child, if a child comes?
He cringes in the night, now, and closes his
eyes, as
she sits and
watches him; he cries softly in the darkness; for
he has grasped some
fragment of the knowledge that bows the shoulders
and shadows the eyes
of the Monstruwacans. And Oh, it is simple,
simple.
Whence
came the
giants and abhumans in the first
case? Who
is it
whose hybrid and devolved children fill the
Land??
Who if not Man? Who if not him,
himself?
Every horror that walks the night in human form
Out here
is sprung from
some such mating as his, far, far, back in
time. Their ancestors
were
the criminals, the banished, the quarantined, the
heroic, the hated and
the lost.
Perhaps some predate the Redoubt and the fall of
Night;
but they do not predate humanity, for they are
come from
humanity. That is
why the Land reflects the Redoubt like an
evil mirror, and why it is so terrible to
men. If it was
purely alien it would not be a place of fear, but
from the tiny imps to
the great Watchers the land is full of the abhuman, of
that which is
not simply alien but is kin no matter how distant
to humanity, and that
is why its horror is beyond words.
His soul absorbs this truth, and deep
within he
feels it begin to
change and to learn and to grow in new ways, and
he is helpless to stop
it. He opens his eyes again and looks
at her, and her
expression is no longer utterly meaningless.
Her gaze is measured
and wise and full of instruction, and the message
it carries is: Even as you and I.
He has seen the future lying on the rocks, cut
apart by
a rotating
blade one molecule wide. But he moves toward
her again, and this
time she does not flee.
*****************
The dreams and memories of the past that come to
him are
increasingly
meaningless. The drugs and overlays and
bright illusions that
were employed to keep him below the threshold of
human pneumasomatic
activity and hopefully immune to the Eaters have
been lifted from
him. He remembers his life in the
Redoubt. He
remembers the long-debated and hundred-times
argued Prophecy, the deep
divisions and the doctrinal wars that rove the
pyramid, the belief and
the knowledge
echoing back
from the future that human beings would once
more follow the ancient path of Andros' journey
and find the deep Land
of which he spoke, where they could build them a
new
Refuge. He remembers the Honour that
was given him and his
followers, the Honour that they could not
refuse. He remembers
again the one he left and he remembers her last
words.
But he cannot connect that life with this any
more.
He cannot go back. Lying in the
night-woman's arms, melted
in her black vision, the memories fade.
*****************
The path of the host northward has been blocked
by new
volcanic
activity, its attempt to strike left has ended in
disaster, and now it
blindly makes its way round to the east of that
obstacle, climbing
higher and higher into the bleak night.
They pass through a local sub-ecology centred
round the
corpse of a
minor Titan that has died and whose organic parts
will feed the
creatures of the dark for many
centuries. Its skeleton lies
far away south, faintly luminescent, three
furlongs in length.
Creatures like giant fleas and oversized versions
of the omnipresent
cold-crabs swarm near it. The woman catches
and eats them with
casual ease, cracking their shells in her
teeth. They are not
dangerous to armed human beings but some of their
higher-rank predators
are. The host is attacked
occasionally by these but
the night people are not. They are not
completely immune
but it seems the creatures of the Land do not see
them as alien.
The Land's ecology is fundamentally
detritivorous,
depending on the
radiations and wastes and corpses of a variety of
giant self-organising
systems whose energy sources are outside its orbit
and whose
organization is far too complex to be simply
described as
living. The Redoubt is the greatest of
these, but the
Titans are the largest mobile examples. When
one dies there is a
flowering of life round it until its skeleton is
picked clean of all
flesh and salvageable mechanisms, perhaps ten
thousand years
later. This Titan, however, is so tiny
compared to most
that none of the abhuman cultures have attempted
to mine it, and the
risk they suffer skirting it close is
correspondingly less.
They pass the dead Thing and its penumbra of life
without much
loss.
The area of vulcanism is not a simple river of
fire but
a complex of
fire-holes and lakes and lava streams breaking up
and rejoining, with
no clear border, but at last they are able
to turn north, past
the eastern flank of the fire-vents that have
confused their ancient
maps. The volcanic activity is intense and
they move past a plain
of choking smoke and fire. The
armoured marchers
ahead of him are continually visible to his
eyes. His presence
one hundred fathoms behind them is almost familiar
and they no longer
try to repel him if he approaches closer, but he
does not try to rejoin
them. He follows the host, and the lost night
people follow him.
In this lighted area the night people shun his
presence
for a
time. But at last he sees the woman again,
quite close. Her
frame is tall and strong. She meets his eyes
and skitters back
into the red mist, but not before he sees her
limned against the fire
clearly and sees her swelling belly.
*****************
They leave the vulcanism behind, and the
almost-darkness
of the Land
returns. They are traveling north at
last, and now they all
travel almost together, with only a little
distance separating
them.
She comes to him again in the dark.
She no
longer wants to
mix but she lies in his arms whenever they
stop. Though she does
not ever talk to him, she tells him things and
teaches him things
without words. She pulls him back to her,
very strongly, if he
tries to leave her.
She is unquestionably ripening with his
child. Her
face is not a
human face but she is unscarred and beautiful
there.
*****************
And at last, . . . .
At last, they come to a place where the whole
Land tips down.
The Slope is not steep, but it seems it will
never
cease. There
is no light any where down there, not even the
dull glow of occasional
fire-holes.
Behind them in the south-west he can just see the
Final
Light on the
top of the Redoubt, shining above the dull
glooming of distant fires,
but nothing else. He wonders if anyone
peers from the high
Tower, and what they report.
They are at the last fringes of the Night
Land. If
the ancient
stories are true, they will descend now for ten
days or twenty days in
utter dark unhunted by any thing: and on the tenth
or the twentieth day
they will see before them a dim light, a shine in
the night, their new
Land. And there in that Land they will fight
beasts and monsters
enough but never one of the twisting trees and
constellations of
blackness and radiance that are gathered about the
Redoubt like sharks
round a sinking ship. They will fight and
die but only death will
threaten them and nothing worse, for there are no
Eaters in that land
of Light. They may recover civilisation, and live,
and
build. Perhaps they may build a
new Redoubt.
At last, their journey is begun.
But he sees some thing else. The
Slope ahead
is not dark as
it was in the days of Andros. There is
utter darkness
there, but in the darkness far ahead there is the
hint of unnatural
movement and life. The last fringe of
the Night Land is
still to be escaped: for there on that fringe, on
the top of the mighty
Slope, is a hive, a constellation, a city, of the
Lights, of the
Eaters, waiting for them.
*****************
For a little while they stop. He is in
utter
despair.
The host is gathered on a wide sloping
plateau ahead of him and
the night people squat behind
him. He can just see
them both.
He can not see the Eaters as well as one under
the Helm,
but even he
can see that the pneumavore activity ahead is not
a temporary matter
but is something like a permanent habitation. In
the far distance the
Lights stream through the air about their own
business, coming and
going. Their presence extends to left and
right indefinitely. It
is doubtful that they came here to catch human
beings, it is doubtful
they see human beings as any thing more important
than berries to be
plucked or any different from other creatures that
gain an intelligence
high enough to sorb,
but none
of this will save them. If they go
down that Slope they will be worse than
dead. Their eternal part
will be consumed, and for them the cycle of birth
and rebirth will end
forever.
Or perhaps not. The host is waiting
and
resting here but it
is not turning back. All of them have
survived repeated
scans and attacks by the Eaters. They are
the survivors of
survivors and apparently for them the Helms are
sufficient
protection.
And the night people are dead inside
already. All but
one, who carries life within her.
*****************
She is quite close. When he turns his head
to her
she is already
looking intently at him.
And now she rises and comes to him, and crouches
before
him where he
sits.
She has moved squarely in his field of vision,
and
though she does not
speak her intent and direction now become plain,
communicated by her
posture and perhaps by something too basic and
ancient to be called
telepathy. She stares at him. He
receives
knowledge. Gazing
into her eyes, in the dim glow of distant fires,
it slowly becomes
clear to him that this halt is no
surprise. This place is
familiar to her. This has happened many
times before. She is
expecting them to turn back here. She
knew this would
happen.
The hegiras
turn back here, he realises: and then they
wander furthur
in the Night, with the night people following,
picking off the wounded
and dying, protected by them, living off them,
until the very last and
there are none left. Then perhaps the
last few selected
survivors join the night people. And they
wait, a year or two
more, until another host comes. So it
has been for long,
perhaps as long as the hegiras
have been going on. So it
will be, as long as they continue. And
when the last
attempt is abandoned, perhaps the night people
will have reached a
perfect adaption: perhaps they will be able to
survive alone in the
Night, for ever. That is how it has been.
And now, she does speak to him, for only the
second time
ever.
She comes closer and she leans forward and grips
his arms and stares
more intently into his eyes, and from her mouth
words
issue. She strains with the effort of
communication to
him. Her speech is like the stridulating of
insects, like the hum
of machines, like the clatter of rock on rock,
with a surface layer of
human tone and grammar that is as complete a lie
as the beauty of her
face: yet though the words are confused the
meaning is clear enough,
and many times repeated. Join us.
An offer is made to him, and
not only to him but to every thing that may spring
from him, to all the
children of his body. It is not love
as humans know it that
is offered; but in a deeper way it is the same
thing as love, for it is
the promise of life for all his descendants,
offered by one who has the
authentic power to give or
withhold. He may become one
with them. He is lucky, he is Honored.
He and all his
children may move from the status of prey
to that of peer,
they may
join the people-after-people, the transcendent
survivors; and
here, now, if he consents, the new life may
begin.
Then she is silent. Her eyes show no doubt
that he
will accept,
for she has selected well. Choice and
freedom are not part of her
universe and he has no choice at all. She
waits, poised on toes
and fingers, summoning him, and the deep
strategies of the
abhuman flow in her clothes and her bones and her
hair, ancient
and predatory and victorious. He has no
choice at all.
She has won?
But the game is not over. It is never ever
over.
There is another choice.
*****************
He rises, and puts her aside, and walks forward
into the
host.
They let him pass through them and do not
attack.
If they had he
would simply have walked round them, but this is
better, there is no
need. Perhaps it is the long habituation of
the journey, or
perhaps it is the fact that he wants nothing at
all from them now and
that this is radiating from him in ways that can
not be
denied.
He passes through them, and starts down the slow
overlapping bulges of
rock that make up the Slope.
A little while goes by. From time to
time he
looks round to
check they are following. He holds up his dyskos
on high, a blazing
violet and jale torch, not worrying about charge
now, and, yes, they
are following him. For however short a
time they have a
captain and a leader.
After a little while more he is sure they are set
on
their way, and he
lowers the dyskos and moves to one side and stops
and sits down.
They continue on their path, ignoring him, walking
past
him. He sees the night people are
coming too, as they
must. They have no choice, after
all. They are very
close behind the armoured men and now they are
seemingly accepted as
part of the host and not generating any
alarm. It is another
victory for them, he supposes, in their universe
of value and being, to
be thus unfeared by those they will consume; but
that is not his
universe and, no, he will not after all journey
there. He turns
back here.
She does not look at him as she passes. He
is
fallen and she
would eat his flesh if she had time, but she does
not have time, for
the prey species is travelling on for the first
time ever and they must
follow. He does not look at her.
They all pass him
by. He waits in the night, looking down the
Slope at what is
coming to meet them, coming to meet him.
*****************
The men and women walk down the Slope, through
the
blizzard of shining
motes. The pneumavores come and taste, and
finding no human soul
here pass on toward the surer prey they sense
ahead of them. Jointe is there,
trembling as the implants thrust
him below the threshold of human thought.
Esse plods like a
machine. They do not fall. None
are consumed.
They continue, his people, and now, at last, as he
watches, his heart
breaks
with love for them.
Among them are the night-woman and her
people. They are
untouched. She does not even seem to
see the
Lights. They are invisible to her, he
understands: she does
not sense them and they do not sense her.
*****************
It surprises him that he has even a few seconds
remaining to
watch. He should have been consumed at once,
but the whirlpools
of light pause a little distance from him and he
has time to make his
last reckoning, deathly-wise.
The host will continue through the night, guided
by
untiring
machines.
The night people will follow it, and if any thing
will
survive whatever
other perils lie ahead, they will.
His child will wake in the deep
Eden, or it will not. If it
wakes, perhaps it will be human, with a soul,
despite its mother.
Perhaps, perhaps, it may be part of a new and
human race.
All is done.
Are the Lights many beings, or one?
They still hesitate.
They are oddly venal and understandable now:
this much they have
in common with humanity: greed, and
calculation. If they
approach he may suicide. They can tell he is
different, but they
can not know what he knows, and so they wait,
edging slowly
closer. It amuses him.
In his wrist, the capsule pulses. One move
would
pluck it
forth. His pneumasome would fly free, split
apart from his flesh
by ancient unforgotten cunning. To whatever
lies beyond
life.
But he has never loved. Or rather, this is
his
love.
© pinlighter
4 May 2005
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