brick, incinerating wood and tar and flesh. The roar of flames, the crash and rumble of falling masonry, a background ululation that was the ultimate verbalization of mass humanity in extremis; a small, feeble, unimportant sound against the snarl of engines and the scream and thunder of falling bombs.
He-I thrust away a fallen timber, climbed a heap of rubble, staggered toward the house, half of which was still standing, beside a gaping pit where a broken main gushed sewage. The side of the bedroom was gone. Against the faded ocher wallpaper, a picture hung askew. I remembered the day she had bought it in Petticoat Lane, the hours we had spent framing it, choosing the spot to hang it.
A gaunt scarecrow, a comic figure in blackface with half a head of hair, came out through the charred opening where the front door had been, holding a broken doll in her arms. I reached her, looked down at the chalk-white, blue-nostriled, gray-lipped, sunken-eyed face of my child. A deep trough ran across her forehead, as if a crowbar had been pressed into waxy flesh. I looked into Mellia’s eyes; her mouth was open, and a raw, insistent wailing came from it. . . .
Silence and brightness blossomed around me.
Mellia, unconscious, moaned and fought the straps.
“Slow the pace, Karg,” I said. “You’ve got half of eternity to play with. Why be greedy?”
“I’m making excellent progress, Mr. Ravel,” he said. “A very nice trace, that last one. The ordeal of the loved one—most interesting.”
“You’ll burn her out,” I said.
He looked at me the way a lab man looks at a specimen.
“If I reach that conclusion, Mr. Ravel, your worst fears will be realized.”
“She’s human, not a machine, Karg. That’s what you wanted, remember? Why punish her for not being some thing she can’t be?”
“Punishment? A human concept, Mr. Ravel. If I find a tool weak, sometimes heat
He-I thrust away a fallen timber, climbed a heap of rubble, staggered toward the house, half of which was still standing, beside a gaping pit where a broken main gushed sewage. The side of the bedroom was gone. Against the faded ocher wallpaper, a picture hung askew. I remembered the day she had bought it in Petticoat Lane, the hours we had spent framing it, choosing the spot to hang it.
A gaunt scarecrow, a comic figure in blackface with half a head of hair, came out through the charred opening where the front door had been, holding a broken doll in her arms. I reached her, looked down at the chalk-white, blue-nostriled, gray-lipped, sunken-eyed face of my child. A deep trough ran across her forehead, as if a crowbar had been pressed into waxy flesh. I looked into Mellia’s eyes; her mouth was open, and a raw, insistent wailing came from it. . . .
Silence and brightness blossomed around me.
Mellia, unconscious, moaned and fought the straps.
“Slow the pace, Karg,” I said. “You’ve got half of eternity to play with. Why be greedy?”
“I’m making excellent progress, Mr. Ravel,” he said. “A very nice trace, that last one. The ordeal of the loved one—most interesting.”
“You’ll burn her out,” I said.
He looked at me the way a lab man looks at a specimen.
“If I reach that conclusion, Mr. Ravel, your worst fears will be realized.”
“She’s human, not a machine, Karg. That’s what you wanted, remember? Why punish her for not being some thing she can’t be?”
“Punishment? A human concept, Mr. Ravel. If I find a tool weak, sometimes heat