American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,230

shallow pools. They spent so much time on it, so many hours hunting through the ravines and empty homes of this place… they spent days bearing the stupendous, horrible weight of those blocks up and down mountainsides… and now, without warning, it is to melt?

But then they feel it: the world here grows soft. The barrier, which is already quite permeable in Wink, begins to disappear entirely. All places—those distant and disparate, those Here and There, Elsewhere and Nowhere—converge into one.

Their tone changes. They begin to flute and cry and sing in the darkness. This is not an ending, not a death in the dark. This is a new day, this is a beginning, a new world.

She is coming.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

The child screams, and screams, and screams. She looks horrific, a tiny, shriveled person soaked in red with its face contorted and eyes streaming tears. The woman in the panama hat surveys the baby coldly. “Should it be so small?” she asks.

The doctor looks at the baby as if he’s never seen one before. Which, Mona realizes, he probably hasn’t. “It appears to be the acceptable size…”

“Well,” says the woman in the panama hat, “it won’t matter when Mother gets here.”

“Is this as you expected?” asks the doctor. “We need it to be the woman’s progeny, to be Mother’s progeny. Like us, but of this place. Is this Her child?”

The woman in the panama hat shuts her eyes, as if to think. Then her eyes snap open. “Yes,” she says. “It will work. Mother is coming already. I can feel it.” She sighs deeply, as if she has just smelled a particularly alluring fragrance. “It is Her progeny, indirectly. It will work. It is working.”

Mona stares at the bloody child. It’s difficult to really study its features, since it is so slick with blood… but she thinks she sees her brow line, and maybe Dale’s eyes, and could that be her mouth?

This can’t be. I don’t believe it.

The woman in the panama hat holds the child out to the doctor. “Take it. Take it to the highway crossroads just south of town.”

He hesitates. “Do you not wish to do it?”

“No. I have matters to attend to here. She should be there. You must meet Her when She arrives. And when She comes to see me, it will be me… and only me. No”—she glances sideways at Mrs. Benjamin—“distractions.”

“We have not broken any of Mother’s edicts in bringing Her here, have we? We have kept to Her rules?”

The woman in the panama hat gives him a flat stare. “Are you suggesting,” she asks, “that it is possible to defy Mother?”

He bows his head, and takes the child. “Will I need protection?”

“One of the children will assist you.”

“But it’s daylight.”

She rolls her eyes, exasperated. “And why do we need to keep to this town’s rules?”

“You make a fair point.” He and about half of the men and women file out of the room with the screaming child. Mona can still see tiny feet with flexed toes, and struggling arms trying to pull out of his grasp…

“No,” whispers Mona. “No, please…”

One of the men in sweaters—this one a soft brown—turns and looks at her. His gaze is discomfortingly alien. “What do we do with her?” he asks in a quiet monotone.

“Do you know how to use a knife?” asks the woman in the panama hat.

He frowns, nods.

“Do you know how to use one well?”

“I understand the concept.”

“Beside the door is a box. Within it are several knives. Cut her here”—she points to a specific point on her throat—“cut her deep, and make sure she dies.”

“She can die like that?” asks the man, as if this is a foreign concept.

“Oh, yes. Her kind die quite easily. They all do it, eventually.”

“And that’s all it takes?”

“That’s all.”

He nods again, impressed.

“You, and you.” The woman in the panama hat gestures to the remaining men. “Take her”—she points to Mrs. Benjamin—“and come with me. I want to have a discussion with her.”

“Oh, goody,” says Mrs. Benjamin, as the two men grab her by the shoulders. “Am I to get another lecture?”

The woman in the panama hat does not answer as she leads the men dragging Mrs. Benjamin from the room, leaving Mona with the man in the soft brown sweater, who is staring at her with a look of some anticipation, as if about to start a new and exciting experiment.

First he practices the motion: he holds an imaginary knife, and swoops it down in a slash. But