His Other Face
by Loren W. Cooper
|
Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
conclusion
“Screw this,” Sara said suddenly.
She snatched up her keys and her briefcase. The weak winter sun was setting. The birds outside the window had become a moving web of shadows against the fading light. Sara turned her back to the window and left the room. As she walked down the hall toward the elevators, the elevator doors opened. One of her neighbors came into view, her hair the usual neat skullcap of brown and gray, returning from walking her spaniel, Earl.
Sara nodded as the other woman approached. “Mrs. Anderson.”
“Sara, how are you today?”
Sara was interrupted by a sharp growl. She looked down to see the spaniel staring at her, lips pulled back slightly from his teeth, his ears back and his eyes narrow, cold, and flat.
“Not bad,” Sara said cautiously, drawing back toward her side of the hall.
“Earl!” Mrs. Anderson gave the leash a sharp shake. “Stop that! You know Sara. I’m sorry, Sara. I think the birds have him spooked. I’ve never seen so many birds just sitting around the building. Shades of Hitchcock. Must be getting ready to fly south. Staging or something. Earl! Stop that!”
Sara edged on by the two of them. Earl didn’t take his eyes off her, nor did the growling fade, even as Mrs. Anderson dragged him down the hall, shaking his leash and lecturing him. Sara walked as fast as she could to the elevators.
Birds outside, more than Mrs. Anderson had ever seen. And Earl. She’d known Mrs. Anderson and Earl for the last couple of years. Earl was a spaniel through and through. He had the heart of a spaniel, for god’s sake.
Nature will act.
Her finger paused above the button for the lobby.
Go to a high place.
She sighed. Her hand moved up to the button for the twentieth floor, the top floor of the building. She pressed the button. She leaned her head against the metal of the inside of the elevator as the doors sighed closed. She felt crazy, but what wasn’t? How crazy was it to run from birds?
The doors opened to an empty hall. She stepped out cautiously. She walked down to the end of the hall, stopping when she heard skittering movement ahead. The sound faded as she made her way cautiously to the stairway. She took the stairs up to the service exit to the roof. She hadn’t thought through how she’d get through the door, but she thought she would address the question head on, follow the voice, and go to the highest place available.
She stopped when she approached the door. Light leaked around ragged holes in the frame of the door. The metal peeled back around the hinges in small, narrow strips. The door sagged in its frame.
Sara’s hand shook when she reached out to push against the door. She jumped back when it fell away from her hand and out onto the roof with a bang. She saw movement on the roof, small shapes running along the wall, diving for the shadows.
Rats. She’d never known of problems with rats in the building. She’d never heard of rats chewing through a service door, either.
She stepped past the door cautiously, out onto the cement. She heard a distant rush, saw movement around the building, and realized that the birds were swirling around the building in a cloud. She heard the wings, but not one of the birds made any other noise.
Sara’s stomach churned, but she clenched her teeth and walked out onto the roof. “I’m here,” she said. “What do you want of me?”
“We want you to choose, Sara.” The voice that came from behind her spoke softly.
The fallen door shifted behind her. Sara turned back toward it. A familiar bent shape stood in the light of the door. “Ben!” Sara started to step toward Ben, but a prowling movement between the light and the darkness came between them. Sara stopped. “Ben, turn around and get out of here. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s dangerous...”
Her voice failed her as she watched Ben pick his careful way past the obstacle of the door. Behind Ben, Sara could see a dim outline, like the ghost of a tall, powerfully built young man. Ben was reflected in that figure, but wearing a face innocent of the marks of age, his limbs and back straight and filled out with muscle. “It is dangerous,” he said. “I would like to say I’m sorry to see you here, Sara, but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have standing in your place.”
Sara felt a tingling shock numb her extremities. “Ben? What do you know about this?”
“He knows entirely too much about this, Sara. As do I, I’m afraid.” Senator Burns ducked through the door behind Ben. Behind Burns, she saw another ghostly shape as well, its head on his shoulder, its face looking past his own, a face drawn in harsh, heavy lines of age and anger and frustration.
“What?” Sara’s voice failed. “What’s happening?”
“You need to choose, Sara,” Ben said gently. “Think of this as a trial, and you are the judge.”
“Judge of what?” Sara asked. Her voice shook. “I don’t understand.”
“There are times, Sara, and places, where the world has an opportunity to tilt, one way or another.” Burns spoke in a quiet, reassuring voice. “Key decisions made at that time will significantly alter the direction the human world will take. You have the opportunity to make one of those decisions.”
“What do you mean? I don’t understand? Why me? What decision?”
“You took up the burden, Sara,” Ben said gently. “You chose to listen. You didn’t turn away. You didn’t run. When the call came, you heard and you answered. The call picks its own time and place, its own choosing. No one is ever prepared for it. All you can do act when the time comes.”
“And if I refuse the call?”
“I think you know, Sara,” Burns said. “Nature abhors indecision as much as it abhors a vacuum. The opportunity will move on. You hold the key at the moment.”
“And if I don’t choose?”
Burns shrugged. “The key must be released, Sara. It’s how things are. As long as you hold it and live, no one else can choose. The world hangs on the cusp, waiting. My brother and I hang on the cusp, waiting.”
Sara thought of Richard and all the others who’d died. She turned and looked around her. The birds still swirled, the rush of their wings in the darkness heavy with possibility. In the shadows behind and beside her, she saw furtive movement and the red burn of small staring eyes. The key must be released.
Sara shuddered, thinking of the price that had been paid in blood, thinking of the birds and the rats and the dogs. Nature abhors the vacuum of indecision. “Who are you? What is this?
“A trial, Sara,” Ben said patiently. “You must choose. Between my brother and me.”
“Choose what? Choose how? This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Sure it does, Sara.” Burns smiled reassuringly. “What do you want? That’s what this is all about. You’re at that moment. What you choose will determine what kind of world your generation’s children will grow up in. What do you want, Sara? Do you want safety? I can give you that. Protection? I can give you that. Stability, prosperity? Those are the things I offer. Less violence, Sara, less bloodshed. No more children dying in the streets. No more mushrooms popping up in the line of fire.”
“Ask him the cost, Sara,” Ben said grimly. “Ask him what you will pay for his protection. Mark my words, child. You will pay and pay and pay. Stability and security? Maybe he’ll give you those. But what freedoms will you barter away for those things? How much more will you surrender to him? To his government? To his society? To his armies? Who will have to die to bring that security?”
Burns turned on Ben furiously. “And what do you offer? What is freedom? Who has it? The murderer? The rapist? Go ahead. Abandon the laws. See how much peace you have. See how the weak fare against the strong.”
“It’s a simple question, Sara,” Ben said calmly. “How much will you give up for your security? I can’t promise you peace, but I can promise you more choices. Fewer laws. Fewer restrictions on personal freedom. I am a champion for freedom.”
“It can’t be one or the other,” Sara said desperately. “There must be another way. Why can’t we have freedom and security? Why must we choose?”
“It’s your prison as much as ours, child,” Ben told her. “We do all we can within the confines we’re given. Right now my brother is in the ascendant. Other times, I have been. And now it’s up to you. Choose.”
“What if I choose neither of you?” Sara said suddenly. “What if I don’t want either anarchy or rigid order? What if I want us to choose our own path? What if I look for a better way? And how can you give someone freedom, Ben? Isn’t freedom something to be earned?”
“Which path would you take, Sara?” Ben asked. “Safety, knowing it will cost you freedom, but not how much? Or freedom, knowing it will cost you security, but not how much?”
“How well can you take care of your children by yourself, Sara?” Burns asked. “Which of us is it to be?”
“Screw you!” Sara snapped. “I want it all. I don’t want to see an innocent suffer.” She pointed at Ben. “Can you promise that? With your freedom, can you keep someone from hurting a child?”
Ben shook his head. His face became still. The shadow of the younger, powerful Ben shifted restlessly, a chill, alien light burning in his eyes.
“And you,” she said, pointing at Burns, “what does it cost innocents elsewhere to have our security here? Can you provide security for everyone? And can you assure that the physical security you provide won’t hurt the mind and heart and spirit of the children within or without the fences and walls you build?”
The old man’s shape behind him regarded her with the cold, flat stare of a snake as Burns responded. “Security has its price, Sara.”
“Then let us decide for ourselves,” Sara said harshly. “Let us make our own way. If you can’t give us more than we can take on our own, what good are you?”
“You can hold us back, Sara,” Ben said softly. The powerful outline behind him stirred restlessly. “You can bind us both to impotence. That is a choice.”
“For as long as you live,” Burns said roughly. His shadow glared at her past his shoulder. “For as long as you can bear the weight. Until the time comes around again, and the next choice is made.”
“Then that is what I choose,” Sara told them both defiantly.
A harsh expression of disappointment moved across Burns’ face, and he stooped, as if bowed under a great weight. Fire and smoke rose up off him like steam rising off ice, until a cloud of light and darkness boiled overhead. The old man’s shape behind him walked forward, into him, and the senator’s form seemed to collapse and settle inwards until only the old man remained. He looked at her, his face harsh, and then turned away without speaking.
“There’s always a cost for choices made,” Ben said. “Even for this one. I won’t see you again, Sara. I won’t have that much freedom left to me.” He turned after Burns, shuffling past the door slowly, his back bent and his legs crooked, his shadow tangling in the light behind him, the image of the vision of youth gone as if it had never been.
The loud susurrus of the circling birds broke away to fragments as their constant motion splintered away into the night. The scratch and shuffle of the rats drew away into the deeper shadows. The cloud that had erupted out of Burns boiled and rushed toward her, a living thing of fire and smoky darkness. Sara threw up a warding arm as it swarmed over her and poured down into her.
The fire and the smoke settled deeply within her, wrapping itself in the mottled shades of her mixed mortal nature. She fell to her knees, oblivious to the rats, the birds, the cold and the grit of her surroundings, oblivious to all but the endless parade of years, the multitudes of lives crushed in their struggle for power and dominance.
The smoky darkness came upon her with the vast weight of countless ages, the sights and sounds and smells of myriad times and places and peoples, facing the same choice again and again, caught in endless cycles of growth and decay, oppression and chaos.
A cycle she had interrupted, but not broken.
And as the vast weight of the burden of their memories came pouring down over her, she fell to her knees and looked down the pitiless length of the corridors of time to see that the struggle playing itself out in infinite variation through the procession of days and the torment of their endless existence were one and the same. She understood then how many nights like this he and his other face had seen, pulled grudgingly into a spiraling orbit around the eternal hunger for power that connected them and lay between them, and with that she understood the worst of it.
So it had always been; so it would always be.
Copyright © 2018 by Loren W. Cooper
