Visitors would take notice of her on their way to view the memorial and the crematoria. They would snap pictures. She would neither pose for nor demur from their cameras. Occasionally people would approach her in the square to ask her why a woman of such advanced years would labor so to clean a vast concrete square. They would ask in many languages. Although she spoke only Polish, she understood the question in most languages now, and could answer in a few of them as well.
“You see that house there,” she would tell them, pointing to her small home just beyond the outer fence of the camp. “I lived there sixty years ago, watching from my backyard, and I did nothing. So now I sweep.”
A stroke of her broom for every time she closed her window to the stench of the smoke. For every time she pulled vegetables from her garden, and ignored the sounds from the death chambers. For every time she took Sunday communion, and went to bed in silence. For each of these things there was a stroke of her broom. And she could only hope that the millions who visited Majdanek would see the respect she now gave the dead . . . and perhaps they in turn might once again find the respect for her and her people that had also burned in the death camps of Poland.
The leaves of fall had gone through their spectrum of color, and now, brittle and brown in these early days of December, they longed for their grave of snow as they tumbled on the concrete, pulverizing as they cartwheeled in the wind. The sky was a cloud of gray, pulled from horizon to horizon like a faded linen. It was a snow-sky. But no matter. If it snowed, then it snowed. She would not leave her task this morning until the flurries multiplied into a true fall of snow. So she pushed her broom, churning up leaf fragments and bird droppings, pushing back the tide of disorder to the edges of the square. When the sun struck her cheek, she thought it was something imagined, until she looked to the southern sky.
A hole had opened in the clouds to the south.
An elliptical spot of blue opened before the sun, spreading wider. Her sight and hearing had peaked long ago, and it took a few minutes until she heard the heavy beating of blades against the air, and saw the approaching shapes that soon resolved themselves into three helicopters descending toward her. They were shiny and white—nothing like the military monstrosities she had seen before, They came down in the square, creating a down-draft that cleaned the square far better than her broom. But she held her ground, holding her kerchief on her head, and watching in the center of the square, beside the stone monument to the Holocaust. In all her years of tending to the square, she had never seen activity such as this. Instinctively she knew that she was about to be a witness to something wonderful, or something horrible—she did not know which.
An hour later, she found herself on her knees in the church she had frequented all her life, bowed in dire supplication, her broom abandoned forever in the square.
30. Majdanek
As the Shards stepped down from the helicopter in Majdanek, Dillon could feel their influence settling upon the stark place of death. The evil of so many years ago still lingered here like an oil slick, permeating the rocks, coating the leaves, worming into the lungs with every breath. Yet Dillon could swear the evil receded with their presence, leaving the Earth prepared to give back what it had stolen.
“We should not be here,” Winston said. He had been repeating it like a mantra since he regained consciousness and learned their destination. “We should not be here at all.”
Back in the plane Dillon had stated the case quite simply. They were hijacked. They were captive, and that, if nothing else, made them obliged.
“Do you believe we should do this?” Tory had asked. “Instead of seeking out the Vectors?”
Dillon found himself borrowing some of Tessic’s faith for his own. “If there’s a God,” Dillon said, “then I refuse to believe Okoya is his messenger.”
Now, as they stood on the concrete square, a sense of foreboding took root. Up ahead stood a concrete dome that, for more than a generation, held a mound of ashes raked from the ovens when Majdanek was liberated. Now those ashes were being hosed down into a silty mortar for them.
“Instant resurrection,” said Michael. “Just add water.”
“We should not be here,” said Winston.
Tessic led them as far as the dome’s entrance, where a team of triage workers waited—but Tessic and the workers remained outside, Tessic deeming the act of creation inviolate, not to be seen. And so Dillon, Tory, Winston, and Michael went in alone, while Tessic and his workers waited for a sign of the miracle.
* * *
Faith had brought Elon Tessic to this precarious pinnacle of his life, but to propel it to completion, that would take business acumen. This, he knew, was why he was chosen for the task. Who but one of the most successful businessmen in the world could orchestrate such an event? Everything was a clockwork now; a massive, interconnected machine fitted by Tessic, and powered by the divine gifts of Dillon Cole and his three friends. More than thirty thousand were in Tessic’s employ, clearing, building, setting the stage. Most workers knew nothing. They received their paychecks and went home, the knowledge that their families were fed was enough for them. Others knew bits and pieces—saw a corner of the grand design—but only Tessic saw how it all fit together, and as he watched his great machine of revival grind into motion, even he was stunned by how precisely the gears turned.
He had begun a year ago—the day after the Colorado River Backwash—the event that introduced Dillon to the world. He knew Dillon could not have died, and, once he was found he maneuvered himself into a position as Dillon’s jailer. Then he put much of Poland’s builders to work, constructing the first of Tessic’s personal megapolis. The nation was more than happy to lay the infrastructure at their own expense—including the very roads that would connect the complex with the rest of Poland.
Tessitech had placed an order with a German bus company for three hundred coaches, with plush velour seats. They were the kind of tour buses that moved millions in and out of tourist attractions around the world. The bus builder’s simple assumption was that Tessic, who dabbled in everything from art collecting, to construction, was planning to open some sort of travel enterprise. He hired three hundred bus drivers. They had been collecting salaries for weeks now, and had yet to be called to work. Until today.
Once it began there could be no turning back. The clockwork would grind to its inexorable conclusion; a final solution to the Final Solution—and now Tessic knew why the Almighty, in his wisdom, had seen fit to make Tessic into a manufacturer of weapons. He had at his disposal enough firepower to decimate anyone who tried to stop him.
* * *
It was nothing short of hell.
A pit of muddy ash soon became for the Shards a place beyond the reach of nightmare.
It began even before they stepped over the railing that separated the living from the dead. Then, as they stepped into the pit, they lost their balance, sliding down the slick concrete slope until they were waist deep in the wet, ashen soup.
Things began to move.
The homogenous mixture began to differentiate, bubbling like a brew in a massive cauldron, turning brown, then red, and taking on the smell of blood.
“Syntaxis!” shouted Dillon, for to be alone and disconnected now would be unbearable.
“Hurry, hurry!” cried Tory.
Dillon reached his left hand out to Michael’s. Tory pressed herself against Michael, thrusting her hand to Dillon’s chest. Winston insinuated between Dillon and Tory, and syntaxis swept through them. They thought it would shield them, but as their power magnified, their perception expanded, as if they had a dozen new senses at their grasp.
It happened quickly.
In a matter of minutes the wet ash began to transubstantiate, and they were immersed in bones and blood; a crucible of flesh consuming its own decay, swelling, soaking up the moisture.
Dillon didn’t know if the others screamed for he could only hear his own as that first hand grabbed at his l
eg; a woman as terrified now as she had been at the moment of her death. Then there was another, and another, until their wailing voices drowned out his own. The resurrection of flesh was not a glorious process, gilded in sacred light. It was bloody, and violent. It was like birth itself; traumatic and painful until the cry of life filled the room.
The living differentiated themselves from the dead, pulling themselves from the pit, staggering toward the light at the entrance, where Tessic’s workers would clean them, and spirit them away—their lives processed with the swift efficiency that their deaths had been.
Soon the tangle of desperate arms and legs pulled the Shards down, and Dillon felt something within himself give way. He felt his mind drop through a trap door like a snail pulling into its shell, around and around, spiraling deeper into itself, until reaching the center of his soul, where time and self mercifully vanished into sweet nothingness.
* * *
A steady stream of the awakened flowed from the monument dome. They were rinsed with warm water, and wrapped in plush robes. “You’ve been liberated,” was all the workers were allowed to tell them. Explanations, Tessic knew, were secondary. That they were alive was all they needed to know; enough to grapple with for now. Their names were taken down, and they were walked to the line of buses that would shuttle them three hundred miles to the Ciechanow complex.
After four hours the line of the awakened slowed, then stopped. Only then did Tessic go into the dome. There he found the four Shards lying in a vascular miasma that was not quite alive, not quite dead. A dense membrane thick with blood vessels had grown up from the pit and onto the walls; flesh that could not find its form, but was obliged to find some form. It became a womb that filled the cavity of the monument from the bottom of the pit to the apex of the dome. Some of the workers who followed Tessic in became ill, but Tessic began to pray, reciting the Sh’ma. It was the same prayer he had uttered when his plane hit clear air turbulence and took a five-thousand-foot dive. The same prayer he had intoned when terrorists put the muzzle of a pistol to his head, then capriciously spared his life. It was a prayer he said daily, but only on certain occasions did it become a lifeline to sanity.
Three others followed Tessic down into the center of this terrible womb, where the four Shards lay unconscious, almost fully encased by the membrane, their bodies touching in what seemed a very specific way. He tore them from it, and blood spilled from the membrane. It was already beginning to peel from the walls and drop from the dome as it died. He left, carrying Dillon in his arms, focusing all his attention on Dillon’s catatonic eyes, refusing to look at the dying walls of the womb, for he could swear within the veiny patterns of flesh, he could still see faces.
* * *
It was deep into the night by the time Dillon spiraled out of himself, coming back from wherever it was he had gone. When he did return from that void, he returned slowly, expanding his perception in increments. First he was aware of his own heartbeat. Then he felt the shape and form of his body. His extremities. Fingers and toes. He knew that he was covered in some thick fabric. A quilt, warm and comfortable.
He had never quite lost consciousness. Some part of him was aware of all that happened, because even in his state of detachment, he remembered being pulled from the pit. He remembered that he was in Tessic’s private dacha on the outskirts of Ciechanow. He knew that five thousand had been brought back from a death camp known to have snuffed almost half a million.
And he knew that their powers had given out before the rest of the job was done.
The Shards had simply shut down, emptied. Now it took a great measure of his will just to move his arm. He wanted to sleep—truly sleep, but he could not. He wondered if he’d ever be able to sleep again.
“You’re back with us, then?”
Dillon pulled himself up enough in his bed to see Tessic keeping a vigil beside him.
“Is it still Monday?” Dillon asked.
“Barely. You slept for more than twelve hours.”
Dillon shook his head. “I didn’t sleep.”
“No,” Tessic admitted. “Your eyes were open.”
“Where are the others?”
“Resting, like you.”
“Things didn’t go the way you had expected.”
“Things rarely do. But all in perspective. Today five thousand murdered souls have a new claim on life.”
“You expected more.”
Tessic stood and paced to the window.
“Next time there will be. Today you flexed your muscles. You were bound to exhaust yourself. This is how we build ourselves up. Next time you’ll be twice as strong.”
“This isn’t a marathon.”
“I think that perhaps it is.” Tessic crossed the room to a familiar device Dillon hadn’t noticed in the room before; two canisters of colored sand.
“The Dillonometer.”
“When we brought you here,” Tessic said, “the sands took half an hour to differentiate. Now it’s down to five minutes. Tomorrow it will be back to ten seconds—maybe even less.” He let out a confident sigh. “You see? The Majdanek dome was only an auspicious beginning.”
He waited for Dillon’s reaction, but when Dillon gave him none, he said, “Maddy should be back soon. Shall I send her in?”
Dillon shifted in his bed—feeling every joint, every tendon. “What makes you so sure I want to see her?”
“Do not be so hard on her,” Tessic said. “You owe her your life a dozen times over.”
“I know that.”
“She is in love with you.”
Dillon looked away from him. “I know that, too.” After what his mind had been exposed to that day, he didn’t know why sorting out his feelings for Maddy should seem such a monumental task. He did care for Maddy deeply; this girl who had the strength to fire into his face to save him; this girl who threw away all that she had to be a companion to him, longing for a syntaxis of their own that would never come.
“I don’t want her to see me like this,” Dillon said. A blanket escape, he thought, from having to think about it any further.
But Tessic replied, “She’s seen you worse.” He turned to leave, but before exiting, he turned back to Dillon, and smiled as if in admiration. What’s to admire? thought Dillon, right now I’m a helpless lump on a featherbed.
“I know you don’t feel it yet, but this day in Majdanek has made you stronger. It has given you stamina. Soon you’ll have enough stamina to face Birkenau.”
Dillon had never been a student of history, but he knew that when people spoke of Auschwitz, they really meant Birkenau; Auschwitz’s back-factory of death. Dillon closed his eyes, feeling his lids weighty as a sunset.
* * *
Maddy went in at about midnight. She expected—almost hoped— she’d find Dillon asleep, but his eyes were already fixed on her when she cracked open the door.
“You missed the first game of our little World Series,” Dillon said.
She stepped in, her ambivalence preceding her. “I was in the outfield,” she told him. “I was in Ciechanow, making sure everything went smoothly when the buses arrived.”
“And did it?”
“Like silk.” And in that, there was no exaggeration. For eight hours she had helped to supervise the handing out of apartment keys and groceries. Four people per apartment, one bag per person, families kept together when possible. These refugees were not ones to look this mysterious gift horse in the mouth. “Three buildings are at 100% occupancy.”
“A hundred and nine to go,” said Dillon.
“At least at this site.” She leaned forward and kissed him gently on his lips. He didn’t return it, and she couldn’t tell whether it was a judgment on her, or if he simply found himself too weak. She found her spirit wilting and it angered her that her feelings for him could affect her so.
“I suppose not everything can go like silk,” he said. When she looked at his eyes, she could tell he had just read her. But why should
she care? What could he learn now that he didn’t already know?
“I never thought I’d get caught in that old romantic loophole,” she said, “wanting what I can never have.”
“I never thought of you as a romantic,” said Dillon.
“No. Until recently, I thought of myself as a realist.”
He tried to smile, but it came out slim. “I guess now you’re a surrealist.”
She looked at him a moment more and then shook her head quickly, trying to break the spell he cast even at his weakest moments. “Here we are in the middle of undoing the greatest crime in recorded history and I’m going on about broken hearts.” She stood from the edge of the bed. She had no illusions about her purpose in his life anymore. She was nothing more than a facilitator. She trusted that her disciplined mind would force her to accept this, and if not, she’d simply endure the pain like a good soldier. “Winston and the others are in the living room, warming themselves around the fire. You should join them. As I’m not quite so superhuman, I’m going to bed.”
“You can stay here,” Dillon offered, but it came out as an offer of mercy. Lukewarm compassion.
“Tessic gave me the best bedroom in the place,” Maddy told him. “Even better than yours.”
Maddy retreated to her room, thankful for her mental and physical exhaustion, for it hammered her into sleep and kept her from dwelling on the things she could not change.
* * *
The fireplace glowed an eerie blueish-green, and the logs were not consumed by the flames. Dillon found Michael, Tory and Winston around the fire, drinking from mugs as if this were some sort of cozy retreat—but the worn looks on their faces were anything but cozy.
Winston saw Dillon first as he entered the room and threw him that we-should-not-be-here kind of gaze.
“Don’t say it,” Dillon said.
“I ain’t saying nothing,” Winston answered, too tired to sublimate his Alabaman drawl. “I’m just gonna sit here and sip my egg nog and pretend like it’s Christmas.”
Shuttered Sky ss-3 Page 35