The Best of Lucius Shepard by Lucius Shepard Page B

the sun was at
meridian, the sky was a deep blue such as I have come to associate with the
late-afternoon skies of this world, and the sun itself was tinged with red, its
globe well defined—I think it may have been farther along the path to dwarfism
than the sun of this world.) All these elements contributed to the menace of
the scene, but the dominant force was the Citadel. Unlike the other buildings,
no carvings adorned it. No screaming eagles, no symbols of terror and war. It was
a construct of simple curves and straight lines; but that simplicity implied an
animal sleekness, communicated a sense of great power under restraint, and I
had the feeling that at any moment the building might come alive and devour
everyone within its reach. It seemed to give its darkness to the air.
     
    I approached a man
standing nearby and asked what was going on. He looked at me askance, then
checked around to see if anyone was watching us. “Haven’t you heard?” he said.
     
    “I’ve been away,” I
told him.
     
    This, I could see,
struck him as peculiar, but he accepted the fact and said, “They thought he was
coming back to life, but it was a false alarm. Now they’re offering
sacrifices.”
     
    The procession of
cars had reached the steps of the Citadel, and from them emerged a number of
people with their hands bound behind their backs, and a lesser number of very
large men, who began shoving them up the steps toward the main doors. Those
doors swung open, and from the depths of the Citadel issued a kind of growling music
overlaid with fanfares of trumpets. A reddish glow—feeble at first, then
brightening to a blaze—shone from within. The light and the music set my heart
racing. I backed away, and as I did, I thought I saw a face forming in the
midst of that red glow. Hitler’s face, I believe. But I didn’t wait to validate
this. I ran, ran as hard as I could back to the street behind the warehouses,
and there, to my relief, I discovered that the tunnel had once again been
opened.
     
    I
leaned back, trying to compare what I had read with my knowledge of the twins.
Those instances of silent communication. Telepathy? Alise’s endocrinal control.
Their habit of turning lamps on to burn away the night—could this be some
residual behavior left over from cave life? Tom had mentioned that the lights
had never been completely extinguished, merely dimmed. Was this all an
elaborate fantasy he had concocted to obscure their pitiful reality? I was
certain this was the case with Alise’s testimony; but whatever, I found that I
was no longer angry at the twins, that they had been elevated in my thoughts
from nuisance to mystery. Looking back, I can see that my new attitude was
every bit as discriminatory as my previous one. I felt for them an adolescent
avidity such as I might have exhibited toward a strange pet. They were neat,
weird, with the freakish appeal of Venus’s-flytraps and sea monkeys. Nobody
else had one like them, and having them to myself made me feel superior. I
would discover what sort of tricks they could perform, takes notes on their
peculiarities, and then, eventually growing bored, I’d move along to a more
consuming interest. Though I was intelligent enough to understand that this
attitude was—in its indulgence and lack of concern for others—typically
ugly-American, I saw no harm in adopting it. Why, they might even benefit from
my attention.
     
    At
that moment I heard voices outside. I skimmed the notebook toward the others on
the floor and affected nonchalance. The door opened; they entered and froze
upon seeing me. “Hi,” I said. “Door was open, so I waited for you here. What
you been up to?”
     
    Tom’s
eyes flicked to the notebooks, and Alise said, “We’ve been walking.”
     
    “Yeah?”
I said this with great good cheer, as if pleased that they had been taking
exercise. “Too bad I didn’t get back earlier. I could have gone with you.”
     
    “Why
are you back?” asked Tom,