“I’m sorry I took so long to get back to you,” he said. “We had an unexpected guest. A certain amount of posturing and positioning was needed.”
“I imagine it’s tough, keeping control of a domain that large,” I said.
“Yes, but the end goal is hopefully worthwhile.”
“You’re an angel, colloquially speaking. Are the motives here angelic? Supporting Johannes?”
“Considering my earlier offer?”
“No. Just curious.”
“My motives aren’t angelic. I do believe our actions are necessary.”
“I’ve heard it described as a ghetto for Others.”
“I don’t agree with the choice of word, ‘ghetto’, but yes, a place for Others. Humans are winning, Others are being forced to the fringes, and something is liable to happen, given time.”
I nodded, “Humans are winning. That’s nice to know, and a little difficult to grasp.”
“A long story. Why is it so hard to believe?”
“You said it yourself. Demons beat angels-”
“All other things being equal,” Faysal Anwar said. “A greater angel can defeat lesser demons, but while a greater angel occupies themselves with that, what is the greater demon doing?”
“They’re equivalents?” I asked.
“To be honest,” Faysal said, “I don’t know. But I’m inclined to say no.”
I nodded. “I’m surprised you don’t know.”
“My kind don’t have a network of communication. The greatest so-called ‘angels’ do, yes, but I only know what I’ve picked up through thousands of years of observation, patience, and periodically crossing paths with others of my kind who deign to speak to me.”
“Ah,” I said.
“You were saying, before I interrupted? Demons beat angels, and this makes it hard to believe man would succeed?”
“Yeah,” I said. I pulled my hands from my pockets and spread my arms. Look at me. Entropy wins. I’ve been to the Drains, but I haven’t come across anything suggesting that there’s a force of creation that’s working just as hard.”
“There are two possible answers,” Faysal Anwar told me. “The first is that such a place exists, but creation spews forth, it does not take in.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Gods come from somewhere, don’t they?”
“Maybe,” he echoed me.
“The second possibility?”
He swished his tail. The long fur and the movement of snow behind him made it look more dramatic. “That the drains are not annihilating anything, only changing. Change provokes change, much as you continue to spread the effect of the ‘Drains’, as you call the abyss. That change might be uncomfortable, even unpleasant or ugly when that change affects the things you find comfortable, but not intrinsically bad.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But that brings me back to my initial question. If humans are succeeding here, and the forces of annihilation and Wrong are supposed to win over the forces of creation and Right, are humans simply beating the Others back because we’re somehow prevailing over Wrong? The demonic choirs include a choir of human depravities… can that mean that we’re a divine creation, that we’re naturally opposed to demons, and somehow we’re one of the only choirs that’s winning, against all odds?”
He tilted his head a little.
I swallowed hard. My mouth was dry.
“It sounds less like you’re trying to ask me a question and more like you’re trying to convince yourself,” he said.
I shrugged, sticking my hands back in my pockets, more for a place to put them than a need for warmth or anything like that.
“It also sounds,” he said, very delicately, “like you aren’t doing a very good job of convincing yourself.”
Not the answer I’d wanted.
I looked down at the surface of the ice. I moved my foot, and it thrummed.
“I really don’t like the other answers,” I finally said. If we aren’t Right…
“I can imagine you don’t. I can’t tell you that humankind is innately Good, Blake Thorburn, but take solace in the fact that I can’t tell you that humans are innately Wrong either. I don’t know.”
“Damn it,” I said.
“If it helps,” he replied, “You’re making good strides forward. Most wouldn’t go to the efforts you have.”
“I’m not human,” I said.
“No,” he said. He stood and stretched. “But for something only one or two steps removed from humanity, you’re doing well enough to count, as I see it.”
He turned to leave, walking past the point where the shore was visible, treading across the nothingness between my present patch of light and the light of downtown, what would be a ten minute walk away.
I averted my eyes as he blossomed with light.
When the light faded, I saw what he’d left behind.
Three rusty pipes, each connected to the others. A triangle, though one of the pipes was bent, making it closer to a skewed square. The bend made it possible to stand up, almost like a door.
My limbs snapped and creaked as I started walking. How long had I been standing there before Faysal Anwar approached me?
My back snapped more as I bent to pick up the connected loop of pipes and picked it up. One of the bits of pipe swung, screeching a metal-on-metal screech as it came partially unscrewed at the end. Still connected, but one section pointed to the ice below me.
Unwieldy. As a loop, it was maybe four feet across at the widest point. I had to hold it at an awkward angle to keep it from dragging on the ground and maybe even coming to pieces in the process.
More importantly, I didn’t want to hold it too high and risk enclosing myself in a ‘circle’. I couldn’t imagine anything more humiliating and problematic.
My arms didn’t get tired, but they did get stiff. I couldn’t raise it higher, and I couldn’t let go, so I simply brought it down, so one side could touch the surface at my feet.
Though the pipe wasn’t hot to the touch, ice turned to water and then boiled into plumes of steam as the rust-coated metal made contact. Rust flecks and grime made the frothing bubbles a red-black.
Hm.
I laid it down, and it continued to boil and steam, sinking into and beyond the reflective surface. The ice that had been sectioned off melted. Not so different from a hole for ice fishing. The reflections it cast were those of a still pool of water. The ring of pipes floated, but it didn’t float in water.
A light flickered in those depths. A dim, old lightbulb crackling to life for a moment.
In the darkness, I saw a figure appear, large round eyes glowing the faintest of greens, hands reaching for the pipe, holding the loop much as I had.
“Hi, Green Eyes,” I said. “Blake here.”
She was silent, but talking wasn’t easy when one was underwater. I wondered if she could hear me.
“You gave me guidance when I needed it. I offered you a way out, if I got the chance. If you want company, and a bit of a break-”
She lunged.
The ring of pipes came apart. Bubbles hit the surface, distorting the view.
The bubbles faded. I had a glimpse of her narrow, pale body, before she swam up and through the lopsided pool of of melted ice, breaking the surface.
She didn’t emerge on my side.
The water was disturbed twice more before she let it be still.