now true, descriptions of Paris, from years before the explosion.
“I’m lucky you heard my shots,” Sam says when he sits back. “Thank you again.”
“Did you find phantoms in the forest?” Thibaut says. Her calm energy is beyond him.“ ‘Chemical-blue, twisted machines of jujube-trees of rotten flesh’?”
“Yes,” she says. “And I took their picture. They’ll be in the book. I want the ruins. Soldiers. The Resistance.” She takes a picture of him in his nightclothes.
“Is it not too dark?” he says.
“Not for this camera.”
Thibaut breathes deep and considers. A heavy hardback. Photographs, eulogy, the nights and days of Paris after the blast. Who will write the text?
“So the Nazis saw you taking pictures and came after you,” he says. “With those wolf-tables. They think you’re a spy. What was it you photographed?”
Sam examines her camera. “Mostly what I want is the manifs,” she says. He thinks he sees distaste when she says that, alongside her eagerness. “I’m not leaving until I catch them all.”
They listen to the hooting of predators and the calls of prey astounded to exist. From behind the ripped-up cara feathered sphere the size of a fist rolls into view, sending up dust. It opens. In its center is a single, staring blue eye.
Sam stares back at it.
“It’s eating,” Thibaut says. “They live on looking.” It feels good to tell her things she does not know. “You can catch them and make them fat if you show them bright colors. Then we roast them.” The meat was greasy with everything they’d seen. A horde of the things rolls into view behind the first. Sam takes pictures as they regard her.
Thibaut decides he will stay with her a while.
—
Mosquitoes come. “I heard about a cell of your people,” Sam says. “A big one, maybe the main one. That there was a plan. I heard they were ambushed.”
Thibaut says nothing and he doesn’t look up. He continues to divide his food. He has bread and smoked meat.Sam has chocolate she says she bartered from an American secret agent on some mission of murder.
“They’re all in here,” she says when she sees him looking at it. “This place is crawling with that kind. They’re on their own in here.”
“This secret agent can’t have been very secret,” Thibaut says.
She laughs. “He was at first. They always tell you in the end.”
When the Germans sealed the city, the U.S. government, like every, expressed its outrage. And, also like the others, was relieved. That the manifs and their energies—and, or, the devils—would be contained.
“But you can’t keep this in,” Sam says. “Best you can do is slow it. Things have started happening.”
She tells him of the North Africa campaigns, the dragged-out misery of the Pacific, Europe after the rain. But what Thibaut wants to know most is what she can tell him about Paris. Because perhaps he has been too close to see.
The mission is vacant.
The glow of the nearest streetlight comes up, then wanes. An animal lands on a windowsill,a winged monkey with owl’s eyes. It watches them.
From somewhere there is a loud crack and it flies instantly away. The building groans like a ship.
Something is creaking within, something knocks and approaches. Something descends behind the door.
“Fold over paper,” Sam whispers. “Fold it over and what might come out?”
—
Step step step.
Sounds approach them, beyond the wood. A scratching and the slow slow click of a lock. The door swings open. Inside it is darker than the street.
Thibaut does not breathe. With a careful jerking step, something comes out of the shadow.
—
A towering, swaying thing. Three meters tall. More. It blinks with alien gravity.
It stands like a person under a great weight, swaying on two trim legs. At its waist it is made of lines, offcuts of industry. A tilted anvil-like workbench, bits and machine pieces higher than Thibaut’s head. He stares up at a pole of fetish objects. A
“I’m lucky you heard my shots,” Sam says when he sits back. “Thank you again.”
“Did you find phantoms in the forest?” Thibaut says. Her calm energy is beyond him.“ ‘Chemical-blue, twisted machines of jujube-trees of rotten flesh’?”
“Yes,” she says. “And I took their picture. They’ll be in the book. I want the ruins. Soldiers. The Resistance.” She takes a picture of him in his nightclothes.
“Is it not too dark?” he says.
“Not for this camera.”
Thibaut breathes deep and considers. A heavy hardback. Photographs, eulogy, the nights and days of Paris after the blast. Who will write the text?
“So the Nazis saw you taking pictures and came after you,” he says. “With those wolf-tables. They think you’re a spy. What was it you photographed?”
Sam examines her camera. “Mostly what I want is the manifs,” she says. He thinks he sees distaste when she says that, alongside her eagerness. “I’m not leaving until I catch them all.”
They listen to the hooting of predators and the calls of prey astounded to exist. From behind the ripped-up cara feathered sphere the size of a fist rolls into view, sending up dust. It opens. In its center is a single, staring blue eye.
Sam stares back at it.
“It’s eating,” Thibaut says. “They live on looking.” It feels good to tell her things she does not know. “You can catch them and make them fat if you show them bright colors. Then we roast them.” The meat was greasy with everything they’d seen. A horde of the things rolls into view behind the first. Sam takes pictures as they regard her.
Thibaut decides he will stay with her a while.
—
Mosquitoes come. “I heard about a cell of your people,” Sam says. “A big one, maybe the main one. That there was a plan. I heard they were ambushed.”
Thibaut says nothing and he doesn’t look up. He continues to divide his food. He has bread and smoked meat.Sam has chocolate she says she bartered from an American secret agent on some mission of murder.
“They’re all in here,” she says when she sees him looking at it. “This place is crawling with that kind. They’re on their own in here.”
“This secret agent can’t have been very secret,” Thibaut says.
She laughs. “He was at first. They always tell you in the end.”
When the Germans sealed the city, the U.S. government, like every, expressed its outrage. And, also like the others, was relieved. That the manifs and their energies—and, or, the devils—would be contained.
“But you can’t keep this in,” Sam says. “Best you can do is slow it. Things have started happening.”
She tells him of the North Africa campaigns, the dragged-out misery of the Pacific, Europe after the rain. But what Thibaut wants to know most is what she can tell him about Paris. Because perhaps he has been too close to see.
The mission is vacant.
The glow of the nearest streetlight comes up, then wanes. An animal lands on a windowsill,a winged monkey with owl’s eyes. It watches them.
From somewhere there is a loud crack and it flies instantly away. The building groans like a ship.
Something is creaking within, something knocks and approaches. Something descends behind the door.
“Fold over paper,” Sam whispers. “Fold it over and what might come out?”
—
Step step step.
Sounds approach them, beyond the wood. A scratching and the slow slow click of a lock. The door swings open. Inside it is darker than the street.
Thibaut does not breathe. With a careful jerking step, something comes out of the shadow.
—
A towering, swaying thing. Three meters tall. More. It blinks with alien gravity.
It stands like a person under a great weight, swaying on two trim legs. At its waist it is made of lines, offcuts of industry. A tilted anvil-like workbench, bits and machine pieces higher than Thibaut’s head. He stares up at a pole of fetish objects. A
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