a “conference room” by a stingy university, used by upperclass
Betsy had that grin on her face from behind the dreaded bound green gradebook in which she was keeping notes on each presentation.
“Paul, that was marvelous! It really felt like you could relate to your research topic. Don’t you think?”
“Well, I—”
“I knew you’d love Whistler. You have so much in common.”
He blushed, grinned. “Well, that’s what Jo tells me.”
Betsy’s smile faltered. She leaned forward, almost imperceptibly. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you realize, Doctor?”
“What?”
“What do you mean?”
“Perpetual autumn. It’s coming. A world of gray, silence, nothing. I can hear it.”
“Jean—”
“She’s down there right now, planning it all. Planning the extinction. She’ll need both of us for this to work.”
“Who?”
“She’ll need me for the arrival, and you for the discovery. The pursuit.”
“Jean, who?”
“Notre
“Oui, commandant.”
Reynald looked up at the young man who was not his son, but who was the closest thing he had ever had to family. He tenderly reached out and took Windham’s left hand, regarding the silver ring.
“Your Helen?”
“My Helen.”
Reynald smiled, patted Windham’s hand and let go.
“Get out of here. Go home, son.”
“Jean, I—”
“
“I’ll be back. As soon as I can.”
Reynald smiled.
Gray streets. Windham pulled the collar of his overcoat up, protecting his neck from the bitter lick of the wind. His heart was beating in his throat, not from the pace of the walk, but from that distant look in Jean’s eyes… Reynald was looking beyond this world, seeing a time and place that Windham couldn’t begin to comprehend. He was seeing a world through eyes that became more clouded with the silver each time that Windham visited. The old man would be possessed entirely, soon. What then? What information could the creature at the center of the planet reap from his soul upon his total dissolution that she had not yet been able to take already?
Dead leaves on weathered sidewalks, scritching and scratching wing-man trajectories on either side of Windham’s feet, some crushed underfoot, some leaping into the air on a sudden gust, that last gasp of flight, that final yearning for transcendence.
It was a long walk from the veteran’s complex to the Windhams’ humble apartment. The wind was biting, bringing tears to eyes, or perhaps simply enabling tears to eyes, begging the knees to buckle, the strong legs to give out, the weary soldier to crumple to park bench as he tried not to sob for his father-figure, old and wasting and silver.
Windham wiped a tear from his left eye, the cold silver of his ring playfully touching the tip of his nose in the process. He regarded his hand, with its lace of scar, nails once bitten to the quick by adolescent nervousness, white line across the palm where hand-to-hand combat had suddenly and painfully involved a blade of polymer and a hand of flesh, a simple silver ring that symbolized his love for a simple, book-loving girl named Helen, whose nose he loved to kiss, a simple, childish gesture that made her smile, and in the silence of so many nights, that smile was conveyed more through the liquid opening of her lips heard in the black than the actual viewing of the adorable act. He kissed the tip of her nose and knew that she smiled.
He took the ring off his finger, looked at it closely, so happy that he had finally found the one. Or perhaps she had found him…Silver on silver.
Leaves clawing a path around the park bench, that shivering noise of dry and decaying organic scraping along concrete. A black car came down the street, pulling into the entrance of the complex on the other side of the road, waiting for the palpable departure of wrought-iron gate and the ineffable snap of the phase shield before passing through the fence. Windham did not know whose house that was, but they were obviously of some importance if phase tech was being wasted on their protection.
Three identical women came out of the front door of the complex. One opened the car’s back passenger door and bowed subserviently to the salt-and-pepper man who got out. Windham knew that the identical women had to be angels, and the man from the car must be a member of the creature’s newly-created government. Windham squinted and saw the man hand one of the angels a metallic cylinder.
“Move along.”
Windham jumped up at the voice, and spun around to see a fourth woman, identical to the three inside of the complex, standing behind the park bench.
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Your time to serve her will come, Joseph Windham.” The angel’s eyes tore into his mind, a slow-burning tug. He stumbled back a few steps, dropping his silver ring to the ground, where it started to roll away.
The angel reached out and the ring gently lifted from the ground into its hand. It walked over to the silent Windham and placed the ring in his hand.
“Move along, Joseph Windham. Go home to your young bride. We will come for you when it is time.”
He turned away from the angel and walked away, but felt her gaze on his back.
“Mother?”
“He knows…Or at least suspects.”
Nan turned away from Windham, who had just turned the corner and continued walking down the sidewalk. This man would be a focal point of history, and he couldn’t even hold on to his engagement ring tightly. Nan smiled to herself.
“What?”
“How does it begin?”
He laughed in the firelight of Room 4, still stroking Hope’s hair, still snuggling, although there had been no sex, two soulmates brought together by technology and hating every minute of it, now sharing a moment of tender quiet in the plush fireplace bedroom of the university’s alumni house.
“How does what begin?”
“The new book. ‘The Stillness Between.’”
He stroked her hair. “Well, it starts with a sad little girl who loves chocolate milk.”
She laughed. “Oh yeah? And how does it end?”
Paul stopped stroking Hope’s hair. she turned and looked into his eyes, which reflected the fire beside the bed.
“Paul?”
“It doesn’t end. It’ll never end.”
“Won’t you run out of paper?”
A pause, not a pregnant pause, impossibility of pregnant pause because they were
