I glance at Revik’s face, watch him thinking about this.
I can tell he doesn’t exactly disagree.
Hell, I’m not even sure I do.
Galaith watches Revik too. After a pause, he smiles wanly.
“Rolf, my dear friend...humans are, quite simply, made to be dominated. If not by seers, then by more powerful humans. In truth, they prefer it.” He gestures broadly over the whitewashed buildings, the rows of uniformed men. “This war is a case in point,” he says. “Is it the honest leader to whom the masses flock? The one who gives them greater freedoms? More responsibility for their lives?” He smiles, shaking his head. “No. It is the one who gives them purpose, Rolf. An enemy. A beautiful dream that tells them all of their problems can be solved. Do they care that this dream is borne of countless lies? No. They do not. No modern human leader has ever been loved as the Germans love Hitler, Rolf. Not Churchill, not Roosevelt. Not since the last of his kind...Napoleon, Caesar, the Emperors of old Asia.”
Revik stands there, blank-faced.
Then he laughs.
“You yourself are human!” he says.
“Yes.” Galaith smiles. “I am. But I am also one who sees this truth...and accepts it. Would you condemn me for this? Call me a race traitor to choose reality?”
Revik pauses, looking at him. “No,” he says.
Revik is in pain. I feel it on him. I feel it through him, even though it makes no sense that I should. It will be decades before I am even alive in his world. I realize the pain is for Elise and something crushes the small bones in my chest, making it hard to breathe, hard to remain where I am. The craziness behind this feeling doesn’t escape me.
I am jealous. I am beyond jealous, and of two dead people.
I follow his eyes to the muddy tracks below. Men in gray-green uniforms roll a tank of gas onto a wagon tied to a wooden yoke laced to a mule. The soldiers cluck at the mule, pulling at its bridle until the mule, the wagon, and the tank stand in the middle of the mud ruts in a circular drive. Two more tanks are loaded, pulled by another mule and a horse. The animals halt where men line up in formation, in the center of the circular drive.
Around them, I count over a hundred people.
“Why are we here?” Revik says again, but this time I hear uneasiness in his voice.
“I want to cure you, Rolf. Of obedience. Of being a slave.”
I feel my stomach roll over. I know suddenly, what I’m going to see.
I don’t want to see it. I turn to Maygar.
Let’s go. You were right. This is a dead end.
But Maygar is focused on Galaith.
He does not see what I see, or if he does, he does not care.
The separation pain worsens, mixes with a grief too thick to think through. The resonance is too strong; I can’t change my vibration enough to pull myself out. I am locked here, tied with steel cords to this past Revik and his grief for his dead wife.
That is him? Maygar says of Galaith. He is human, Bridge!
A silver channel opens up above the three of them, feeding directly into the cloud of the Rooks...the Dreng, I think, remembering Vash’s explanation. Terian’s light body shines with wire-like threads, but many fewer than existed when I glimpsed that side of him in San Francisco. The widest channel of all opens between the Dreng and the faceless man.
That same channel then opens to Revik.
Sharp, silver light ignites through his aleimi like molten sparks. The sickness I feel worsens as I watch his light change. The silver overtakes the softer gold-white, seems to strengthen it, but I see it as a covering over, a slow eclipse of something I realize I still love, that I can’t seem to stop loving, no matter how hard I try.
Seconds later, the auras around Terian and Revik gleam bright with metallic, silver light, emitting lightning-like flashes. An even brighter aura pulses off Galaith.
I hear Maygar mutter beside me.
...Impossible.
Terian winks at Revik. “You see, my cantankerous, Heer friend,” he says with a smirk. “Galaith, here, he is like a great, big mirror. Anything that lives in the network, lives also in him. Which means, if any of us has a present for the network, he is the first to unwrap it...”
Terian’s eyes turn slightly colder, and just for the barest instant, more predatory. I see the covetousness in him, even back then, but he turns it into a smile.
“...We only get tastes, right Mr. G?” he jokes. “Scraps and bites?”
Galaith doesn’t respond. He watches Revik carefully. “Are you all right?”#p#分页标题#e#
I feel Maygar’s shock expanding, pulling on me.
What? I send, irritated. I cannot take my eyes off Revik.
Did you not hear me? Maygar hisses. That man...he is a human being! He is not seer at all...! It is impossible that he can do these things!