Yes, he agrees. It is still quite pretty.
I pause on his qualifier, then let it go.
Now the lights of people dominate, but I see every other living being as well; I am shocked by the variety of them, their different colors and vibrations.
Hawks, blue jays and sparrows wing by. I see dogs running down the street, their outlines discernible through a blur of amiable light. Flies and gnats and ladybugs are pale dots; worms, cats, moles, snakes, squirrels, raccoons, rats, fleas, butterflies, trees, flowers, ants, gophers, beetles...they all flicker and shine separately yet remain connected in the overall matrix of light and vibration on the ground. Whatever I focus on encompasses my view, until I can feel each individual light, until it vibrates slightly with my own.
Then I start to see them, moving among the clusters of blurred human lights.
...They are everywhere.
Chiseled outlines like the man beside me are present in nearly one in five collections of humans. Some walk in their own clusters, five or six or even ten of them together, speaking to one another animatedly, showing the faint outline of business suits and blue jeans, T-shirts and name brand coats. Just as often, I see them alone, or with groups of blob-like humans.
I see seers attached to humans by the geometrical shapes that rise above their heads. It’s not hard to see that the communication isn’t equal; instead, it’s more like ventriloquist and wooden dummy. In some places, two or three seers control the humans in an entire building. A kind of horror takes over as I see more and more seers controlling humans in this way.
So many, I say. How did they all get past the Sweeps? Past SCARB?
He senses my fear, and his light grows cautious.
SCARB isn’t interested in controlling all seers, he tells me. Only those who are not owned. They are also not officially aware of the Rooks, who are quite good at infiltrating human hierarchies, including SCARB itself. Many of these seers you see are owned. Many are also Rooks, albeit low-levels ones for the most part, non-infiltrators. It is in the interests of both human and seer governments to keep this reality from civilians.
Wait, I send. You’re saying human governments—
Yes, he says, emitting a shrug. Does this really surprise you? Although, as I said, even they do not know the extent of it. Some know this situation isn’t tenable. There is a sort of ‘cold war’ happening between the seers and the humans on many levels.
I don’t answer him for a moment.
Shrugging. he adds, There are more seers here than you see now, Allie. Those with the skill and inclination can eliminate their frequency from regular perception in the Barrier, mainly through blending with the lights that make up their environment.
Another thought trickles in, one that has already occurred to me.
They cannot see us, Allie. At least not in a regular scan. I am shielding us. Therefore, they would have to know where they were looking. There are ways to track anyone, of course...
I stare down, trying to count them.
It is impossible.
Seers have only three real options, he tells me next. We can live with the Seven in seclusion, and according to their holy precepts. It is not a bad life, but it is not for all seers, just as it would not be for all humans to live as monks. The second option we have is to be owned...to sell our sight to humans. It provides some freedoms, providing one is skilled and has an employer who is fair. But it is risky...a kind of voluntary slavery.
He adds, The third option we have is to join the Rooks...or ‘the Org,’ as they call themselves. They are an underground network of seers with an anti-human agenda.
Which are you? I say, unthinking.
After a pause that lets me know that the question is, indeed, rude, he says, Presently, I am all but the third.
I watch a cluster of seers toy with a crowd of humans, changing their emotions back and forth like ocean currents. I feel their laughter as we pass.
They are no more dangerous than humans, he says, a little defensively that time. There are mature elements, and less mature. Kind, and less kind. Thinking, he shrugs. Some are bitter about being enslaved, of course...
I stare at him. No more dangerous than humans?
Well, perhaps that is an exaggeration.
You think? I burst out. What are you all doing here?
Surprise and anger flare his light.
What do you mean? We live here! The same as you!
I refocus on the seer lights, fighting back more words.
Those lights come in all of the colors of the Barrier, textures ranging from smooth as milk to jagged electric sparks. I notice they differ far more from one another than the lights of the humans, which all seem to occupy roughly the same spectrum of gray. The seers are chameleons, changing their skin from contact with one another and threads of light through which they pass.
Yet, somehow, they are more solidly individual than I can express.