Those same refugees, embittered by their struggles, eventually helped the untainted Families lure Avram into their trap. And they greedily helped strip him of his talents before his trial began.
Intellect was a fundamental talent. The man standing naked in this plaza was a moron compared to his old self. In this mutilated state, he had tried to sway opinions and emotions, and on both counts, he had failed badly. Catastrophically. Thinking of the verdict now, Avram began to laugh with an easy rancor. Didn’t these bastards understand? Wasn’t it obvious? Most of what Avram was, innocent or guilty, they were. The creature standing before them was the same as them—small and extraordinarily weak, slightly more articulate than stone, and in the end, inconsequential.
Avram couldn’t count the angry hands reaching for him. The air seemed to tear with the screams. I am going to die now, he warned himself, not entirely displeased. Yet as he closed his eyes, he heard a voice, close and strong:
“Why not let a child kill him?”
The words were framed in a reasonable tone. A quietly compelling tone. For a slippery instant, Avram found himself thinking: Yes, why not? He could see a logic. If an execution was a good thing, who stood to benefit most for taking part? A child, surely. An innocent, pure soul too young to remember the Great Peace, much less those times when the Chamberlains were universally adored.
Avram shuddered, astonished by the turn of his mind.
Three million bystanders heard the voice, and they welcomed its words and the oddly seductive logic.
The plaza grew quiet.
Standing in plain view, between the police and the mob, was a halfgrown boy. No one had seen him before now, and afterward, no one would recall his appearance—not his face or his build, or anything else tangible. The only detail that lingered was the knife he was holding in his right hand, fashioned from pink stone and a simple bone hilt.
With a soothing, almost liquid voice, the boy said, “Let me kill him.”
No one moved, or spoke.
He took a step, then another, passing through a curtain of cold vapor that should have frozen him in mid-stride. Half a hundred unconscious, stampeded people lay in a heap before him. He stepped over them with a gentle grace, smiling now, looking at the nearest of the police without malice or scorn. Later, witnesses would talk about how harmless he seemed. Like a boy about to play a game, they said. Centuries later, when the public finally learned the boy’s identity, the surviving witnesses would grow quiet and thoughtful. Some would laugh painfully, while others simply cried.
The only person who knew enough to be afraid was the prisoner. With a cold clean terror, Avram shouted, “Go away! Leave me alone!”
The boy winked at the highest ranking officer, saying, “Ma’am? Would you please hold him for me?”
The police couldn’t help him fast enough.
“Don’t!” Avram cried out. “I don’t want to… no…!”
But Avram couldn’t defend himself. He was nothing but a retrofitted ape, and five strong officers managed to restrain him, holding him absolutely still as the boy put that odd knife to the throat, slicing it open, cutting the larynx in mid-scream.
The next cut opened the skull beneath the short red hair.
That’s a damned sharp piece of stone, the officers thought. And that was about all that occurred to them.
With his free hand, the boy removed a shiny, delicately crenelated brain, placing it under his arm like a loaf of bread. Then he set out in every direction at once. He walked past everyone in that explosive mob, whispering to them, telling them to go home, telling them that the Great Peace hadn’t died and they should honor it in their lives, always.
He vanished without trace or fuss.
People assumed that he would destroy the criminal’s soul, as promised. No one ever touched him or even thought of questioning his motives.
“I believed him,” thousands remarked with the same unconcerned voice. Even when they knew who he was and what eventually transpired on the Earth, they said, “I don’t know what you’re saying. To me, he seemed like a very good person…”
2
At irregular intervals, usually twice every century, our single prisoner undergoes a thorough examination:
We drain the blood from her body, and every cell and nanoliter of plasma is analyzed in scrupulous detail. Muscles and bones as well as organ tissues are biopsied with the same rigor. Her neural system—a sketchy remnant of her former mind—is subjected to every benign test, plus several invasive procedures that have caused some degradation over the last millennia. Staff psychiatrists as well as respected colleagues are able to question her at length, assuring that her mental health is adequate. (What purpose is served in imprisoning someone who can’t understand her crime? Where would be the punishment, or the just sense of vengeance?) Then once the interviews have concluded, the Nuyens and other untainted Families are allowed to meet with the prisoner in private, making their own tests, and if they wish, torturing her.
We assume that even after a hundred thousand years and untold effort on our part, Alice continues to hide portions of herself. But if we persist, with luck, the truth will eventually be pried from whatever is left of her.
The Core was dead, and the rest of the galaxy was in chaos: Civil and intersystem wars were common. Apocalyptic religions were spreading. Refugees moved in desperate waves, searching for new homes. Half of the Families were officially disbanded, while the other half were spending their days hunting for Chamberlains and Sanchexes and anyone else who wouldn’t surrender their godly powers.
Yet despite the enormous turmoil, the mother world was enjoying peace.
The Earth had never been richer than it was today. And if the truth were told, Alice Chamberlain was responsible for most of its recent success.
The most famous criminal in Creation was being held in solitary confinement, inside a deep-mantle facility built and maintained specifically for her. The Earth’s Council paid the bills, but those expenses were trivial. What terrified people, civilian and Family alike, was the possibility that someone would steal Alice away. After all, she was the black angel who had brought a judgment day. By owning her, any borderline movement or newborn faith would move into sudden prominence. Or a disgruntled god from one of the disbanded Families might be tempted. More than a few of them had declared that Alice’s imprisonment was obscenely cruel, and at its heart, pointless. Their prisoner wasn’t the woman who helped destroy the Core. That creature was dismantled long ago. What was sitting inside the tiny white cell was nothing—a bit of dermis left behind by a murderer’s hand, scrubbed free of blood, and identity, and its essential soul.
Renegade Chamberlains were considered the most dangerous enemies.
Various specialists, human and otherwise, did nothing but assemble and update lists of potential attackers, and the same name reliably occupied the first slot:
Ord.
He was the last Chamberlain. The Baby. Alice had befriended him during the days leading up to her surrender. She had felt sentimental toward him and the innocence of youth, perhaps. But some years later, Alice slipped away from her first prison cell, and in those critical minutes, she met with the boy, in secret.
Alarms had sounded across the system, accomplishing nothing.
Then the black angel returned to her cell, accomplishing the trick just as easily and as suddenly as she had managed her escape.
That’s when Ord vanished. With his brother Thomas, he went to the edge of interstellar space, pausing at a secret location where great portions of Alice were being stored. There they found fabulous machines composed of strange matter. There were talents that only a god could embrace, and perhaps no god could entirely control—all waiting to be cataloged and studied, and eventually destroyed. But together, the two Chamberlains broke into the facility and stole much of what Alice had been. Then with a terrific acceleration, Thomas and the Baby left the solar system, and eventually, they left the Milky Way, too.