The City of Mirrors
Page 38
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Tim, you’ve got us pretty worried in here. Talk to me, buddy.
And just like that the gates of memory opened, releasing a flood. The rain forest, with its steamy air and dense green canopy full of hooting animals; the stickiness of my skin and the omnipresent swarm of insects around my face; the soldiers, scanning the trees with their rifles as we walked, their faces streaked with jungle paint; the statues, manlike figures of monstrous form, warning us away even as they called us forward, summoning us deeper into the heart of this vile place; the bats.
They’d come at night, swarming our encampment. Bats by the hundreds, the thousands, the ten thousands, a flapping multitude. They blotted out the heavens. They took the sky by storm. The gates of hell had opened and this was its disgorgement, its black vomitus. They seemed not to fly but to swim, moving in organized waves, like a school of airborne fish. They fell upon us, all wings and teeth and vicious little squeaks of joy. I remembered the shots, the screams. I was in a place of blue light and a voice that knew my name but in my mind I was running for the river. I saw a woman, writhing on the banks. Her name was Claudia; she was one of us. The bats had covered her like a cloak. Imagine it, the horror. Almost no part of her was visible. She twitched in a demonic dance of agony. In truth, my first instinct was to do nothing. I did not possess the heart of a hero. Yet sometimes we discover things about ourselves we never knew. I took two great leaps and tackled her, sending the two of us plunging into the fetid jungle water. I felt the hot stab of the bats’ teeth in the flesh of my arms and neck. The water boiled with blood. Such was their fury that even the water did not deter them; they would feed upon us even as they drowned. I locked Claudia’s neck in my elbow and dove down, though I knew this would come to nothing; the woman was already dead.
I remembered all these things, and then one more. I remembered a man’s face. It hovered above me, framed by jungle sky. I was insensate, burning with fever. The air around me throbbed with the din of the helicopter’s blades. The man was yelling something. I tried to focus on his mouth. It was alive, he was saying—my friend, Jonas Lear, was saying—it was alive, it was alive, it was alive…
I lifted my head and looked. The room was barren, like a cell. On the wall across from me, a wide, dark window showed my reflection.
I saw what I’d become.
I did not rise. I launched. I rocketed across the room and hit the window with a thud. Behind the glass, the two men lurched backward. Jonas and the second one, Sykes. Their eyes were wide with fear. I pounded. I roared. I opened my jaws to display my teeth so they would know the measure of my rage. I wanted to kill them. No, not kill. “Kill” is too dull a word for that which I desired. I wanted to annihilate them. I wanted to tear them limb from limb. I wanted to crack their bones and bury my face in the wet remains. I wanted to reach inside their chests and yank out their hearts and devour the bloody meat as the last stray current twitched the muscle and watch their faces as they died. They were yelling, screaming. I was not what they’d bargained for. The glass was bowing, shuddering beneath my blows.
A blast of white-hot brightness engulfed the room. I felt as if I’d been shot by a hundred arrows. I stumbled backward and fell curling to the floor. A clattering of gears above, and with a bang the bars fell, sealing me away.
Tim, I’m sorry. This was never my intention. Forgive me…
Perhaps he was. It made no difference. Even then, huddled in agony, I knew that their advantage was temporary; it held no weight. The walls of my prison could not help but eventually yield to my power. I was the dark flower of mankind, ordained since time’s beginning to destroy a world that had no God to love it.
—
From one, we became Twelve. That, too, is a matter of record. From my blood the ancient seed was taken and passed into others. I came to know these men. At first, they alarmed me. Their human lives had been very different from my own. They possessed no conscience, no pity, no philosophy. They were like brute animals, their bestial hearts full of the blackest of deeds. That such men existed I had long understood, but evil, to be truly comprehended, must be felt, experienced. One must enter into it, as into a lightless cave. One by one they came into my mind, and I into theirs. Babcock was the first. What terrible dreams he possessed—though they were, in truth, no worse than my own. The others followed in due course, each added to the fold. Morrison and Chávez. Baffes and Turrell. Winston and Sosa, Echols and Lambright, Reinhardt and Martínez, vilest of all. Even Carter, whose memories of suffering blew upon the dying embers of compassion in my heart. Over time, in the company of these troubled souls, I underwent an expanding sense of mission. They were my heirs, my acolytes; alone among them, I possessed the capacity to lead. They did not despise the world, as I did; to such men, the world is nothing, as everything is nothing. Their appetites knew no moderation; unguided, they would bring down swift and total destruction upon us all. They were mine to command, but how to make them follow?
What they needed was a god.
Nine and one, I commanded them, in my best god voice. Nine are yours but one is mine, as you are mine. Into the tenth shall be planted the seed so that we will be Many, millions-fold.
A reasonable person might ask, Why did you do it? If I possessed the power to lead them, surely I could have put a stop to everything. The rage was part of it, yes. All that I loved had been taken from me, and that which I did not love as well, which was my human life. So, too, did the biological imperatives of my remanufactured self; could you ask a hungry lion to ignore the bounty of the veldt? I do not note these things to seek the pardon of any person, because my actions are unpardonable, nor to say I’m sorry, although I am. (Does that surprise you to hear? That Timothy Fanning, called Zero, is sorry? It’s true: I’m sorry about everything.) I merely wish to set the stage, to place my mental contours in their proper context. What did I desire? To make the world a wasteland; to bring upon it the mirrored image of my wretched self; to punish Lear, my friend, my enemy, who believed he could save a world that was not savable, that never deserved saving in the first place.
And just like that the gates of memory opened, releasing a flood. The rain forest, with its steamy air and dense green canopy full of hooting animals; the stickiness of my skin and the omnipresent swarm of insects around my face; the soldiers, scanning the trees with their rifles as we walked, their faces streaked with jungle paint; the statues, manlike figures of monstrous form, warning us away even as they called us forward, summoning us deeper into the heart of this vile place; the bats.
They’d come at night, swarming our encampment. Bats by the hundreds, the thousands, the ten thousands, a flapping multitude. They blotted out the heavens. They took the sky by storm. The gates of hell had opened and this was its disgorgement, its black vomitus. They seemed not to fly but to swim, moving in organized waves, like a school of airborne fish. They fell upon us, all wings and teeth and vicious little squeaks of joy. I remembered the shots, the screams. I was in a place of blue light and a voice that knew my name but in my mind I was running for the river. I saw a woman, writhing on the banks. Her name was Claudia; she was one of us. The bats had covered her like a cloak. Imagine it, the horror. Almost no part of her was visible. She twitched in a demonic dance of agony. In truth, my first instinct was to do nothing. I did not possess the heart of a hero. Yet sometimes we discover things about ourselves we never knew. I took two great leaps and tackled her, sending the two of us plunging into the fetid jungle water. I felt the hot stab of the bats’ teeth in the flesh of my arms and neck. The water boiled with blood. Such was their fury that even the water did not deter them; they would feed upon us even as they drowned. I locked Claudia’s neck in my elbow and dove down, though I knew this would come to nothing; the woman was already dead.
I remembered all these things, and then one more. I remembered a man’s face. It hovered above me, framed by jungle sky. I was insensate, burning with fever. The air around me throbbed with the din of the helicopter’s blades. The man was yelling something. I tried to focus on his mouth. It was alive, he was saying—my friend, Jonas Lear, was saying—it was alive, it was alive, it was alive…
I lifted my head and looked. The room was barren, like a cell. On the wall across from me, a wide, dark window showed my reflection.
I saw what I’d become.
I did not rise. I launched. I rocketed across the room and hit the window with a thud. Behind the glass, the two men lurched backward. Jonas and the second one, Sykes. Their eyes were wide with fear. I pounded. I roared. I opened my jaws to display my teeth so they would know the measure of my rage. I wanted to kill them. No, not kill. “Kill” is too dull a word for that which I desired. I wanted to annihilate them. I wanted to tear them limb from limb. I wanted to crack their bones and bury my face in the wet remains. I wanted to reach inside their chests and yank out their hearts and devour the bloody meat as the last stray current twitched the muscle and watch their faces as they died. They were yelling, screaming. I was not what they’d bargained for. The glass was bowing, shuddering beneath my blows.
A blast of white-hot brightness engulfed the room. I felt as if I’d been shot by a hundred arrows. I stumbled backward and fell curling to the floor. A clattering of gears above, and with a bang the bars fell, sealing me away.
Tim, I’m sorry. This was never my intention. Forgive me…
Perhaps he was. It made no difference. Even then, huddled in agony, I knew that their advantage was temporary; it held no weight. The walls of my prison could not help but eventually yield to my power. I was the dark flower of mankind, ordained since time’s beginning to destroy a world that had no God to love it.
—
From one, we became Twelve. That, too, is a matter of record. From my blood the ancient seed was taken and passed into others. I came to know these men. At first, they alarmed me. Their human lives had been very different from my own. They possessed no conscience, no pity, no philosophy. They were like brute animals, their bestial hearts full of the blackest of deeds. That such men existed I had long understood, but evil, to be truly comprehended, must be felt, experienced. One must enter into it, as into a lightless cave. One by one they came into my mind, and I into theirs. Babcock was the first. What terrible dreams he possessed—though they were, in truth, no worse than my own. The others followed in due course, each added to the fold. Morrison and Chávez. Baffes and Turrell. Winston and Sosa, Echols and Lambright, Reinhardt and Martínez, vilest of all. Even Carter, whose memories of suffering blew upon the dying embers of compassion in my heart. Over time, in the company of these troubled souls, I underwent an expanding sense of mission. They were my heirs, my acolytes; alone among them, I possessed the capacity to lead. They did not despise the world, as I did; to such men, the world is nothing, as everything is nothing. Their appetites knew no moderation; unguided, they would bring down swift and total destruction upon us all. They were mine to command, but how to make them follow?
What they needed was a god.
Nine and one, I commanded them, in my best god voice. Nine are yours but one is mine, as you are mine. Into the tenth shall be planted the seed so that we will be Many, millions-fold.
A reasonable person might ask, Why did you do it? If I possessed the power to lead them, surely I could have put a stop to everything. The rage was part of it, yes. All that I loved had been taken from me, and that which I did not love as well, which was my human life. So, too, did the biological imperatives of my remanufactured self; could you ask a hungry lion to ignore the bounty of the veldt? I do not note these things to seek the pardon of any person, because my actions are unpardonable, nor to say I’m sorry, although I am. (Does that surprise you to hear? That Timothy Fanning, called Zero, is sorry? It’s true: I’m sorry about everything.) I merely wish to set the stage, to place my mental contours in their proper context. What did I desire? To make the world a wasteland; to bring upon it the mirrored image of my wretched self; to punish Lear, my friend, my enemy, who believed he could save a world that was not savable, that never deserved saving in the first place.
