Angels and Exiles (29 page)

I turned away without returning his salute. The temptation was so terrible, to take up the dream of sand; I was like a sleeper who wishes to close his eyes again even as he knows he must wake immediately. What if I forgot . . . ? What if I returned peacefully to my house . . . ? Mervelld would ask me what I had seen in the desert, and I would answer, “There is nothing in the desert, Mervelld,” with the quiet certainty of a man who has just gouged out his own eyes.

I saw again the corpse Mashak had exhumed; the giant cobbs who served as riding beasts to the Others’ children; the gleam of the sun on the blades of the scimitars; the pendant rose at the neck of the dead woman. I shook myself, and I went to see Captain Mantheor.

The temperature in Paradise seemed more bearable this time, as if my body remembered its old reactions. Mantheor welcomed me with an abstracted hospitality. I accepted his invitation to share his meal. The pale green vegetables grown in our greenhouses tasted of sand.

“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.

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.