If it was a man, it was a dead man with moon-pale eyes, clothed in rags and here and there strigose with splintered bones like sticks and straw bristling from rips in a scarecrow’s costume. If it was a dead man, it was the artist Paladine, for it carried in the cradle of its right arm what, seen through the veils of churning snow, might have been a marionette. If it was a marionette, and not an illusion, there were no strings for its wooden hands to pull, yet the man-sized puppet conveyed it through the storm.
Gwyneth shifted into drive. The tires spun out wet ravelings of clotted snow, but then found traction, and we were away into a city enchanted and haunted, its towers shining high into the night, but under it a black abyss.
77
Gwyneth turned the corner onto a broad avenue where skyscrapers sought a sky beyond their reach and blurred into the upper depths of a sea of snow. Before us lay a display of pageantry beyond all of our experience, a tableau vivant with a shining cast of thousands, tens of thousands, wondrous and exhilarating but also a scene of drama so dire that I was chilled.
She had always been able to see them, of course; and she could see them now, which is why she let our speed fall. On the older towers crafted by masons, the Clears stood side by side on every ledge, aglow in their hospital greens and blues and whites, like candles in endless tiers of votive cups, and in the buildings of steel and glass, they stood at every window, in the snow on every setback. Where the roofs of the lower buildings were visible through the white veils, the Clears stood there, too, and atop the marquees of theaters, on hotel porticoes, and upon the stone pediments that surmounted grand entryways. They gazed down into the street, solemn multitudes, standing witness now and until there was nothing left to which they might attest. I knew without needing confirmation that they were arrayed like this on other avenues and cross streets, on the roofs and in the trees of residential neighborhoods, in other towns and cities and nations, wherever there were people who would fall sick and into death.
From the rear seat, Moriah said, “I’m scared.”
Nothing I could say to her would gentle away her fright. During whatever hours might remain for this world, fear was unavoidable, fear and remorse and grief and fierce, desperate love. In the thrall of such emotions, Gwyneth let the Rover drift to a stop in the middle of the street, and I opened the door and got out and stood in awe and terror, turning, looking up at the thousands who stared down.
Disobedience brought time into the world, so that lives could thereafter be measured to an end. Then Cain murdered Abel, and there was yet another new thing in the world, the power to control others by threat and menace, the power to cut short their stories and rule by fear, whereupon death that was a grace and a welcoming into a life without tears became no longer sacred in itself, but became the blunt weapon of crude men. And though the blood of Abel had once cried out from the Earth, we had come now to a time when so much blood had been spilled over the millennia that the throat of the Earth was clotted and choked, and fresh blood could not raise a voice from it.
Gazing up at the shining multitudes, turning, turning, I spoke to them from my heart, because I knew they could hear that even more clearly than they could hear my voice. I reminded them of the many millions of children, of the fathers who loved and the mothers who cherished, of the simple-minded who in their simplicity were without blame, of the humble and the would-be chaste and the would-be honest and those who loved truth even if they didn’t always speak it, who struggled daily toward an ideal that they might never reach, but for which they yearned. There was hatred among people, but there was also love, bitter envy but also gladness for the fortune of others, greed but also charity, rage but also compassion. No matter how ardently or eloquently I might plead the case of humanity, however, I knew that this radiant audience would not, could not, prevent what was coming, that after we had brought ourselves to this pass, they could not be guardians but only witnesses. The world was run by our free will, and if they were to step down from their ledges and rooftops to undo what had been done, they would take from humanity our free will, after which we would be nothing more than robots, golems with hearts of mud and regimented minds. If some people chose to seek the power to strip the Earth of human life and if others of good intention did not take all necessary steps to defend against such madness, the consequences were as certain as that thunder will follow lightning. These shining multitudes did not stare down with cruel indifference, but with love and pity and grief that perhaps exceeded all of the grief that would wash through the dying nations in the days to come.
My face was stiff with frozen tears when, from the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the street. One Clear had come down among us for the purpose of leading three children to me. They were all under the age of five. I knew them by their bruises and their scars, by the emaciation of forced starvation that hollowed the faces of the twin boys, by the bleeding abrasion that encircled the girl’s neck, which was evidence of the coarse ligature with which she had nearly been strangled. They were like me and Gwyneth and Moriah, outcasts once hated and reviled, now heirs to all the world.
The Clear was the same woman who had visited the ninth apartment while Gwyneth played the piano piece that she had composed in memory of her father. I remembered what she had told me the first night that we met, when she had prepared for us scrambled eggs and brioche with raisin butter. I had asked if she lived alone, and she’d said, There is one who comes and goes infrequently, but I won’t speak of that. This Clear was the one who came and went.
The great host of Clears gathered above me were too far away for me to look into their eyes. In spite of Father’s warning, I met the eyes of this woman, and he was right when he’d told me that I would find them terrible. They were terrible in the sense that they were august and imposing and exalted, blue and yet as clear as glass, containing depths that no eyes I’d ever seen before could contain, as if I were looking through them to the end of time. By her stare, this woman settled a solemn awe upon my heart, and I was frightened by the degree to which I felt humbled and by the intensity with which I felt loved, and I had to look away.
The three children were small, and there was room for them in the backseat with Moriah.
We drove a block in silence, and we knew that however far we might go, we would find the multitudes shining and observant and sorrowing, sentinels to the end.
Suddenly more traffic appeared on the streets, far less than you would expect on a night of good weather, more than I had ever seen in a snowstorm. The drivers were heedless of risk, as if all of them were being pursued.
In Ford Square, the Jumbotron loomed like a giant window that offered a somber view of our future as it was already playing out in Asia, where the dead were lying in the streets and desperate mobs struggled to board ships already overcrowded. The news crawl listed American cities where deaths from the swift-moving plague were being reported, and the geographic spread was so wide that already it should have been clear even to the most confirmed optimists that there would be no refuge.
When three snow plows crossed an intersection in front of us, one after the other in a train, moving fast with emergency beacons flashing, Gwyneth said, “They aren’t serving the city now. They’re fleeing it.”
We fell in behind them, and they cleared the way for us, though that was not their intention.