Page 94 (1/2)
The sun was down The last thing Mausa down for a nap Peter and the others were probably in the other hut, deciding what to do The baby wasaround inside her She lay with her eyes closed and let the sensation fill her Standing the Watch: it seeo A different life That hat happened, she knehen a person had a baby This strange new being grew inside you and by the time it was all over, you were someone different, too
Suddenly she realized: she wasn’t alone
A on the bunk next to hers Spooky, the way she could make herself invisible like that Mausa her knees to her chest as the baby went thuuess I took a little nap there"
Everybody was always talking that way around Airl’s half of the conversation It was a little unnerving, the way she looked at you with that intense gaze, as if she were reading your thoughts Which hen Mausaet it," she said "You want to feel it?"
Amy cocked her head, uncertain
"You can if you want Co a place on the edge of Mausauided it to the curve of her belly The girl’s hand arly soft, not like Mausami’s, which were callused fro around in there a second ago"
A bright flicker of movement Amy drew her hand away quickly, startled
"You feel that?" Amy’s eyes ith pleasant shock "It’s okay, that’s what they do Here-" She took Amy’s hand and pressed it to her belly once more At once the baby flipped and kicked "Whoa, that was a strong one"
Ae and wonderful, Mausa, all that had happened, to feel a babyinto the world
Mausami heard it then Tords
He’s here
She yanked her hand away, scurrying up the cot so she was sitting with her back pushed to the wall The girl was looking at her with a penetrating stare, her eyes filling Maus’s vision like two shining beaht she ht be ill
He’s in the dream With Babcock With the Many
"Who’s here, Amy?"
Theo Theo is here
Chapter FIFTY-ONE
He was Babcock and he was forever He was one of Twelve and also the Other, the one above and behind, the Zero He was the night of nights and he had been Babcock before he becaer that was like time itself inside him, a current in the blood, endless and needful, infinite and without border, a dark wing spreading over the world
He was made of Many A thousand-thousand-thousand scattered over the night sky, like the stars He was one of Twelve and also the Other, the Zero, but his children ithin him also, the ones that carried the seed of his blood, one seed of Twelve; they ht, in theirin which he lay, each to a one, saying, You will not die You are a part of me, as I am a part of you You will drink the blood of the world and fill me up
They were his to command When they ate, he ate When they slept, he slept They were the We, the Babcock, and they were forever as he was forever, all part of the Twelve and the Other, the Zero They dreamed his dark dream with him
He remembered a time, before he Became The time of the little house, in the place called Desert Wells The time of pain and silence and the woman, his s-textures, sensations, visions A box of golden sunlight falling on a square of carpet A worn place on the stoop that fit his sneakered foot just so, and the ridges of rust on the rail that cut the skin of his fingers He reers He rearettes in the kitchen where she talked and watched her stories, and the people on the television, their faces huge and close, their eyes wide and wet, the wolossy pieces of fruit And her voice, always her voice:
Be quiet now, godda to watch this? You oddaodda quiet, so quiet
He remembered her hands, Babcock’s mother’s hands, and the starry bursts of pain when she struck hi, his body lifted on a cloud of pain, and the hitting and the slapping and the burning Always the burning Don’t you cry now You be ato cry about, so much the worse for you, Giles Babcock Her smoky breath, close to his face The look of the red-hot tip of her cigarette where she rolled it against the skin of his hand, and the crisp wet sound of its burning, like cereal when he poured ling with the jets of smoke that puffed from her nostrils And the way the words all stopped up inside him, so that the pain could end-so he could be a man, as she said
It was her voice he remembered most of all Babcock’s mother’s voice His love for her was like a roo sound of her words, her talk-talk-talk Taunting hi into him, like the knife he took from the drawer that day as she sat at the table in the kitchen of the little house in the place called Desert Wells, talking and laughing and laughing and talking and eating her mouthfuls of smoke
The boy isn’t just dumb I tell you, he’s been struck dumb
He was happy, so happy, he’d never felt such happiness in his life as the knife passed into her, the white skin of her throat, the s and pushed with his blade, the love he felt for her lifted from his mind so that he could see what she was at last-that she was a being of flesh and blood and bone All her words and talk-talk-talkThey tasted like blood in his s
They sent him away He wasn’t a boy after all, he was a man; he was a man with a mind and a knife, and they told him to die-die, Babcock, for what you have done He didn’t want to die, not then, not ever And after-after theforetold; and after the doctors and the sickness and the Beco, that he should be one of Twelve, the Babcock-Morrison-Chavez-Baffes-Turrell-Winston-Sosa-Echols-Laht-Martinez-Reinhardt-Carter-one of Twelve and also the Other, the Zero-he had taken the rest the sa cries like soft morsels in his mouth And the ones he did not kill but merely sipped, the one of ten, as the tide of his own blood dictated, becareat and fearful company The Many The We of Babcock
And This Place He had co restored He had drunk his fill of the world and here he rested, dreary again and he heard the Zero, as called Fanning, saying: Brothers, we’re dying Dying! For there was hardly anyone left in the world, no people and no ani those that remained to him, that they should know him, know Babcock and the Zero also, assume their place within him He had stretched out his mind and said to the Many, his children, Carry the last of hu them and their words that they should dream the dream and become one of us, the We, the Babcock And first one had come and then another and more and more and they drea was done, Now you are mine also, like the Many You are ry you will feedothers to me from beyond This Place that they should do the same, and I will let you live in this way and no other And those that did not bend their wills to his, that did not take up the knife when the ti where Babcock’s mind met theirs, they were made to die so the others could see and know and refuse no longer
And so the city was built The City of Babcock, first in all the world
But now there was Another Not the Zero or the Twelve but Another The sa at hiht whenever he tried to fix the gaze of his reat and fearful company, heard her also; he sensed her pull upon the theo, when he was just a boy, watching the red-hot tip rolling, rolling and burning against his flesh
Who am I? they asked her Who am I?
She made them want to remember She made them want to die