WHAT'S STOPPING YOU FROM GETTING YOURS?
With Troyd's speech concluded, the Archon stepped to the microphones again. He clutched the railing and sagged for a moment, but Silas helped support him. With that, he raised his head, and with his eyes rolling and cheeks twitching he spoke.
"My children", he said, giving Valentine an odd tingle over the difference in his voice. The Archon sounded a little like a stroke victim who hadn't quite regained the full use of his tongue. "Your Kurian friends and allies have this day placed one of your number among the eagles that soar over this lovely land of ours. He is an example to be followed, for he teaches us the virtue of cooperation and utility. The beings he directs to guard your homes may look fearsome to you, but consider how fearsome they must look to those who threaten our peace. Perhaps then you shall look on their strange faces and beauty. We, your Kurian friends and allies, know you have sacrificed to feed these beings, but who regrets a toe when a leg is saved?
"There are dark forces at the gates of our city, so long a symbol of the heights mankind can reach, with just the tiniest touch of a friendly hand. With these fresh allies beside us, we can look to better days ahead. Belief in victory will lead to work for victory. Work for victory will lead to an affirmation of that belief.
"Too many homes have been darkened by death in the last year. New medicines are even now on their way to church dispensaries to help you dispel whatever fears and doubts you may have. But these have not come cheaply. We must bring the new B-6 into production to meet orders already placed, and certain luxuries will, for a time, become unavailable. Your conferences will provide you with details of our plans to increase output. If we all push together, a very short period of sacrifice will put us back on the road to prosperity and peace. Meet these hardships, not as a burden among burdens, but as a challenge above self! Will you, my family, accept this challenge?"
"Yes", Silas shouted into the microphone. "Yes, yes, yes", he chanted, and the crowd took it up, perhaps eager for exercise to keep warm in the chill November air. The Youth Vanguard jumped up and down with each "yes".
After a few close-ups of people cheering, and a rowdy student or two lifting her sweater and T-shirt, the TV cameraman left.
Silas came down the stairs, chatting with Troyd.
"Wait for Valentine a moment, won't you, Troyd?" Silas asked. "I believe he's going to accompany you back to your wet little camp. Unless you want to come up and pay your respects in person".
Troyd looked at the ring on his hand, rubbed the skin. "No. I was touched once. That's enough for me".
"Then it's you and me, Valentine", Silas said.
"What, up there?"
"Of course".
"I thought I could just speak to one of the, the ..".
"We call them avatars".
"One of the avatars", Valentine finished.
"He wants to look at you with his own eyes. All eight of them. Are you coming?"
Valentine nodded, and stepped up onto the scaffold stairs.
The four Reapers came up the stairs with them, boots loud on the metal steps. Valentine saw the TV man blanch as he placed his camera in a padded bag and frantically wound cables as the Reapers passed.
Silas hit a button by the microphones - another worker with a little silver television pin on her collar dismantled the microphones - and the stairs Troyd had used to climb up to the blister lowered and flattened into a narrow walkway, bridging a gap between the tower and the scaffold bridge. Valentine saw a slit open up in the tower wall, saw lips peel back as it widened.
He looked up at the blister in the tower. Some trick of light put six Reaper faces in various oddly shaped shards and panels of glass.
Two Reapers led them inside, ducking to go through the slit. Silas followed, hands held out a little for balance. Valentine walked the beam uneasily, more thanks to the Reaper following behind than from fear of a misstep.
They lost two of the Reapers at the portal. Valentine couldn't resist turning around and looking. Sure enough, there were lines of triangles like shark teeth, yet off bias like the blades of a ripsaw, deadly yet decorative bumps on the inner side of those lips.
Valentine was relieved to see the inside conforming to human ideas of architecture and design.
"The center tower is separate from the others?"
"At the level humans go to, yeah. People work full-time in here, you know. They use our technology to light the place, keep the air moving. Seattle used to be a popular piece of real estate for them. I learned they evolved in tidal zones when I was out East in Cambridge".
They passed through an inner, curving shaft. Valentine looked up, saw small spiky projections on both sides of the wheel within wheels. There more threadlike projections connected the two layers of structure. It reminded him of a cross section of a bone with the marrow cleaned out. Climbing it would be possible, he imagined, but a long and demanding ascent.
All the corridors curved and wound, so it was difficult to see more than ten meters or so ahead. The Reapers led them to another elevator, in what Valentine guessed to be the center core of the pillar. Silas put his key into the slot and Valentine heard a beep.
"You have to do it too".
Valentine got the same beep and a green light came on over the elevator. The doors opened and they got in, accompanied by the Reapers.