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The plot thickened

And now, soan, the commotion, but she watched it esticulations and loud, fast chatter in Arabic Someone pointed to the mountains Up, into the sky above the peaks--in the same direction that Dr Amhali had pointed when he’d said, wryly, "They went that way"

They The living "beasts" Eliza drew a hard breath Had they found the in the distance, and then, at her right, a couple of eneral mass of people whose function she couldn’t determine--there were a lot of --and made for the helicopter that was at rest on a piece of flat terrain She kept watching, her tea forgotten in her hand, as the rotors began to spin, picking up speed until billows of dirt were kicking their way toward her and the helicopter lifted up and flew It was loud--hu as she scanned the faces of the people around her She felt handicapped by the language barrier, and very h, and this was a se to perform With a deep breath, Eliza threw her paper cup in a bin and approached one of the few female workers on-site It only took a couple of questions to ascertain the source of the coels?" she asked

"Insha’Allah," the wo

Eliza recalled Dr A, the day before, "It’s all very nice for Christians, yes?" "Angels" in Rome, "demons" here How neat, how tidy for the Western worldview, and horong Musliathered that they wouldn’tsome for themselves For her own part, she had a presentiment that they were better off without theht of what she was beginning to believe--why the prospect of angels frightened her more than the prospect of beasts

44

THIS JUST IN

The seraphiht their own musical accompaniment, had costumes made for the occasion, and calculated their destination for effect And even if they hadn’t raceful Centuries of beneficent one wrong

The "beasts"rinkled and dark with dried blood, their music was chosen for them by sensationalistic television producers, and their beauty and grace were so dead

Two days after the angelic leader’s stunning procla for you"--two days of riots and suicide pacts and mass baptisms in overcrowded churches, two days of furrowed brows and he on the part of a closed council of world leaders--a news bulletin preempted a preempt and exploded in the collective human consciousness with as much force as the Arrival had, if notat a pretty fevered pitch--it was hubird-metabolism journalism: fast fast fast, and voracious The lee; such times as these were the stuff of broadcasters’ dreams Be afraid No Be more afraid! This is not a drill

In that context, the delivery of the latest "this just in" stood apart for its solehest-paid news anchor in the world, a kind of hu rooeless save for a subtle lengthening effect brought on by a slow-clinity, and not just the faux kind created by a real-or-fake sprinkling of salt in his pepper, and, to his credit, if it hadn’t been for his willingness to use his clout in the service of journalistic ethics, things could have been far worse

"My fellow Americans, citizens of Earth…" Oh, to be able to say that, Citizens of Earth! Lesser broadcasters trembled with envy "This station has just come into possession of evidence that appears to validate the Visitors’ claigests these photographs are legitih as you’ll see, many questions arise to which we do not yet have answers I warn you These ies are not suitable for children" Pause Millions leaned forward, breath held "They may not be suitable for anyone, but this is our world, and we cannot look away"

And no one did, and very few sent their children from the room as, without further prea rooms across the nation, and in bars and offices and dorm commons and fire stations and the basement laboratories of the National Museue appeared, brows furrowed

This was the grace period--the furrowing of brows, the knee-jerk disbelief--but it didn’t last long Knee-jerk disbelief had, over the past forty-eight hours, been knuckled under by credulity Many people were newly learning how to believe And so, swiftly and in a great wave, viewer cognition swept frood, and panic on Earth h of course no one knew his name, or wondered at it, the way Eliza had

The personals ad Zuzana and Mik had co the lines of: "Heroic sweetheart currently occupying s-hot maniac body in order to save the world Would sacrifice everything for love, but hopefully won’t have to I really deserve a happy ending"

In a fairy tale, Zuzana had argued, he would get one for sure The pure of heart always prevail There was, between her and Mik, a fairy-tale promise: that when he had performed three heroic tasks, he could ask for her hand She’d meant it in jest, but he’d taken it to heart, and was only one task down out of three--though secretly Zuzana accepted his fixing the air-conditioning in their last hotel room as a heroic act and counted it

Ziri’s sacrifice of his born flesh absolutely qualified as heroism, but life so very oes out of its way to prove just how un-fairy-tale-like it can be

As now

Far away, so happened It was a connection no one would or could make, in either world What happened in Eretz, happened in Eretz, and the sa the tiested a synchronise of Ziri’s discarded Kirin body made its debut on human airwaves--the same h the heart

If there were other worlds beyond these two, maybe they were linked, andout in all of them, shadows of shadows of shadows of shadows Or e of Ziri’s corpse burned itself into the huain

The pain was far worse this time, and no one was there to hold him, and there were no stars to look at, either, as life ebbed He was alone, and then very quickly he was dead, and no one was near with a thurible He’d promised Karou he would name a safety, but he hadn’t There just hadn’t been time

And now there never would be

When Karou had felt Ziri’s soul unskinned, back at the pit, when it had brushed against her senses, she had felt in it a rare purity--the high, surging winds of the Adelphas Mountains; ho that that here he shed the White Wolf’s hated body and slipped free of the clashing swords and howling all around hiht