Incandescent

Paperwhite was a vogue girl, born to love. For three straight days.

Perhaps the gengineers thought that the human urge to crush a lovely flower might be put to good use on a flower that was born to be crushed. Perhaps they realized that girls who did what vogue girls did—were not meant for long life. They were like paper clothing, to be worn once, then discarded.

Such a fragile flower to end an alien plague. The gengineers squirted Paperwhite down her birthing tube into a plague-ridden world that had no use for girls like her any more.

Paperwhite woke to a man’s voice rough with bitterness, crying, “Lord, not another one!”

She sat up with a rustle of soft silk. She opened her eyes to see a grizzled man who looked like he might be her daddy wringing a damp red towel.

“Pink shoes this time!” he cried.

She looked down at her feet, neatly pressed together. Yes, her shoes were pink, and pretty. Delicate straps around her ankles and five-inch spikes. She knew that they would hurt if she walked far, but there was little need for that. She needed only to get to the party!

“Please,” she said to the grizzled man, who had begun to tug at the ragged hair that fell over his forehead, “Can you tell me the way to the party?”

“Oh, you idiot! There’s no party! Why can’t you just...go back? Back up the tube!”

“But why?” Paperwhite said as she gracefully turned, swinging her legs over the edge of the...tube. It was clear, but discolored yellow, and it smelled bad. Now she remembered—this was her birthing tube, and this man was clearly supposed to help her.

She felt her first smile. How nice! The man’s grizzled face changed. His jaw relaxed and his eyes crinkled at the corners. Smile, Paperwhite... smile, man! Beyond him, Paperwhite glimpsed an open door and saw the bar with all its hanging glasses and bottles of delicious liqueurs: chartreuse, coffee, almond, absinthe.

“I should like ...the green one,” she said, moving past the man with her silk dress rustling around her thighs with delicious cool softness.

“Melon or chartreuse?” the man asked, then he slapped his forehead and cried out in anguish. “No! No! Just stay there.”

“But why?” she said, laughing. She brushed his rough cheek with her forefinger. What a pretty color her nails were! The same pale tone as her dress, as her shoes, like the inside of a lovely shell. Ah, to press a shell against your ear and hear the ocean’s roar.

Paperwhite, what did the ocean look like? Where did it lie?

“Come with me,” the man said, voice neither kind nor unkind. Paperwhite paused and ran her hand through her long hair. She held it up; long, smooth hair, a color like...she thought a moment... like a golden pony’s mane. Am I a pony? Paperwhite, running through a field of grass, cool around her hooves, the damp green smell of the early morning in her flaring nostrils.

“Let’s run!” she said to the man. He took his red towel in both hands and began to twist it again, his face suddenly flushed.

“No!” he cried. Then he grabbed her arm, right above the elbow, and began dragging her through the door to the bar. “Come here. Just sit. We’ll figure something out.”

He led her past the bar. She looked over her shoulder, longing for a snifter of chartreuse, and wondering why the music was not playing.

“I want to dance,” she said. Then she noticed things that did not seem right. White webs clustered in the corners of the soft red leather booths. The tables were covered in dirty powder, and the glasses at the bar were not clean, either. He was the bartender! Why had he not been cleaning?

And not a customer in the place. Where were the laps to sit in? Where were the men with smooth heads of hair to caress? The lips to kiss?

“Sit,” the bartender said. “There’ll be no dancing just yet. I’ll call the others.”

Paperwhite sat in a booth near the gold-filigree railing that separated the bar from the street. Quiet street; no one out and about. It was mid-afternoon and surely there should be some customers. Paperwhite raised her hand to wave, then put it down. It didn’t seem right to wave at nobody. She made a streak on the dusty table with her finger, then drew a circle and put two dots for eyes and a half-moon for a smile.

She sighed.

After a moment, she rose and walked to the window. As soon as her feet left the thick carpeting and hit the smooth, cold floor, she felt the strangest feeling and her knees moved back and forth, while her thighs trembled. She grabbed for the filigree railing. If there had been customers, surely they would have laughed. Paperwhite didn’t think she would have liked that, so for the first time, she felt grateful that there were no customers. Gripping the railing, she surveyed the street.

There should have been many people— a cart, businessmen hurrying home, wives carrying their net bags from the grocers, with long baguettes jutting out.

There was the grocer’s, right across the way. Paperwhite’s thin veneer of memory recalled him; he was a customer. But the grocer’s blue and white striped awning was torn, and his window empty. No red and green apples, no yellow bananas, and no hanging chickens above. He should be in the bar; he should have brought a red apple to her.

Paperwhite, when was it you ate an apple? How do you know that under the red, they are white and crisp?

She heard voices, low and muttering. The customers! She turned, feeling her face warming, smiling. Her body trembled, and her blood began to rush, like the sound of the ocean in a shell, and she swept her golden pony hair over her shoulder.

The bartender stood by his ill-kept bar, beside two others. Paperwhite’s stomach clenched when she saw that they were not customers. They were two women, one with black hair cropped at her shoulders, her nose wrinkled to hold a pince-nez, and the other one with a cloth tied around her long brown hair and a pair of dusty gloves on her hands. A teacher and a sweeper. What reason had they to be in the bar?

“Where are the customers?” she asked.

“Be quiet!” the bartender snapped.

Paperwhite’s cheeks burned. Her hand fluttered to her mouth and she said, “Oh!”

“They will certainly come back today,” the teacher said, removing her pince-nez and rubbing them clean on her pale blue sweater.

“Today?” Paperwhite asked excitedly. “The customers?”

All three of them regarded Paperwhite silently.

“I won’t protect her,” the sweeper said at last. “Let’s just take her to them right now. That’d be the best.”

“But the atrocities!” the bartender cried.

“Please tell me, who are atrocities?” Paperwhite asked.

The teacher turned, her face not unkind, although Paperwhite felt little comfort since she really didn’t know what to say, or how to act around a teacher, not being a student. But if she was not a student ...what was she?

Paperwhite remembered. She was a vogue girl. Exquisite, beautifully-mannered, her body slender and rippling like watered silk, her lips full and yielding like a ripe pear, her eyes warm, trusting and loving as a favorite dog. She was gorgeous, perfect, desirable, incandescent.

“It’s hard for you to understand,” the teacher said. “You are temporary,” she said, pointing at Paperwhite. Then she pointed at herself, and the other two— the bartender and the sweeper. “We,” she said indicating all three, “are permanent.”

“Permanent,” Paperwhite said.

The bartender turned away, gripping the bar’s discolored brass railing with both hands, hanging his head. She stepped back, putting her hand to her throat. The blood pulsed there. Her heart beat, so fast, she felt like a bird. There came a thrill, and she felt her skin pucker up, all along her arms, all along her throat.

“I don’t feel temporary,” she said, looking at the two women, the teacher and the sweeper.

“I think you must be afraid,” the teacher said.

“She’s a moron,” the sweeper said, an awful, cruel tone in her voice. “Her mind is blank; she has no soul.”

“I don’t think I can go through this all again,” the bartender said. “Why can’t they just stop? Why do they keep sending them?”

“The gengineers are insane,” the teacher said. “There’s no understanding them any longer. They must be desperate.”

“Just put the girl in the grocer’s wheelbarrow and wheel her down to the post. It’s only three blocks away,” the sweeper said. Then she coughed disdainfully, and punched the bartender on his thick upper arm.

The bartender whirled. He’d made a ball with his fist and was holding it in the sweeper’s face. Paperwhite watched the woman’s eyes change, and saw her shrink away. Fear. And Paperwhite felt the same way.

“Please,” she said to all of them. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

“Everything’s changed,” the bartender said, his voice not unkind. “You don’t know that, because you were just born. What’s your name?” he asked.

“No!” the sweeper cried. “Don’t get involved with her!”

“I don’t think—” the teacher said.

“Paperwhite,” Paperwhite said. “And how do they call you?” she said, stepping toward the bartender, feeling her warmest smile suffusing her face.

She put her arms around his neck and pressed her watered-silk body against his. Then she leaned forward, feeling her lips part, and pressed her lips against his. He smelled... bad... dirty like the bar, but beneath that, there was another smell that Paperwhite liked. It made her think of long, scattered rain, of rolling in damp grass, of feeling her muscles stretch and fire. All along her neck, she felt warmth, down her body, into her belly. Her thighs tensed. His large, warm hand went around her waist; his fingers caressed, the silk rustled. Such a chill! Her tongue was in his mouth.

Then he broke the magic.

Paperwhite did not understand what she saw in the bartender’s dark eyes. Such tired, tired eyes.

“We’re all damned,” he said, his voice thick, as if it was rising through a mud-choked pool.

The teacher began to cry. The sweeper crossed her arms and looked up at the ceiling, shaking her head.

“There are bad men,” the teacher said to Paperwhite. “They want to kill anyone they can find who’s like you,” she said.

Paperwhite did not know what to say. She wasn’t sure what “kill” meant, but her stomach clenched again.

“What am I like?” Paperwhite asked them.

No one answered.

Finally, the bartender spoke. His fingers had flown to his lips, and there was the strangest mixture of wonder and despair in his face.

“You’re a baby,” he said. “And you’re going to burn out in three days, but before that, the Arcturans will come. They’ll do terrible things to you. And we can’t stop them. If we try to hide you, they’ll find you, and they’ll do those things to us, too.”

“Yes,” the teacher said, nodding. “So you see why we are so upset.”

“People would hurt me?” Paperwhite said, looking in each of their faces in turn. “Why?”

“They don’t think you have a soul,” the bartender said. “They hate you.”

“She doesn’t have one,” the sweeper said. “So let’s just take her!”

The teacher started to speak, but the bartender’s expression shifted to horror and dread. Even Paperwhite turned to see shadowed figures silhouetted against the filigreed railing that opened into the street.

“They’re here,” he said.

Paperwhite rushed forward on her delicately-shod feet to welcome the customers.

The customers’ dark uniforms were dusty, just like the bar, and stained in ugly streaks of something crusty.

“Welcome!” Paperwhite said.

There were six of them. How could she possibly divide her attention among them? She thought about this problem a moment while running her hand through her mane of hair, twirling a strand provocatively and smiling.

None of them smiled back.

Then one stepped into the bar. The light caught his face and Paperwhite saw a long scar snaking red and twisted down his cheek. A stubble of gray and blond marked his chin. His lips looked rough, and his eyes were flat gray.

She didn’t think she liked him much.

“Get out here,” he said. He had something long in his hand, like a bar with a grip.

“It just happened,” the bartender said, stepping forward, his feet moving slowly as if they were weighted down. “Captain, I tell you, she just—”

“We told you to stop up the tube,” the Captain said. “No more— of this!” He glared at Paperwhite, then announced grimly, “We told you we’d be back.”

“I know,” the bartender said, holding out his hands in a pleading gesture. “We just don’t know how. I’m just a bartender. These are just—” He turned, indicating the sweeper and the teacher, who embraced each other, eyes wide in fear. “A teacher and a sweeper,” he said.

“Scum!” the Captain said, his voice a toneless growl.

Paperwhite watched him walk toward her, the long bar pointed at her middle. She felt a shiver, then a curious rippling on the back of her neck.

“Come here,” the bartender said.

“Don’t,” the Captain growled.

“She’s just a baby!” the bartender cried. “She’ll be burning out soon, no matter what you do. Why not just—”

The Captain moved like a snake, pushing past Paperwhite; she felt her silk dress rustle like parting grass. The Captain’s black-gloved hand grabbed the bartender’s shoulder, whirling him around. Then the Captain held the bartender close in a parody of an embrace.

“We want this place to be clean,” he said. “Things like this— aren’t clean.”

The teacher stepped forward. Her face was pale and tense, but her voice was firm and clear. “Who are you to say what’s clean or not?”

“Blood cleans,” the Captain said very slowly. The five who were with him advanced. Paperwhite looked at their faces. There was something horrible there. Something she didn’t quite understand in words, but that she knew inside.

“Stop!” she said. “I’ll go with you. Leave them alone.” She threw her hair back over her shoulder and looked at the intruders defiantly.

“What?” the Captain said, turning.

“Take me,” Paperwhite said. “Don’t hurt them. They didn’t know what to do. I was just born.”

The Captain smiled, but it was not the kind of smile that Paperwhite felt an inclination to return. She felt something burning inside her chest, and her legs began to tremble. Looking down at her pretty pink shoes, she willed her legs to stay steady.

“Honey, you don’t know—” said the bartender. The Captain silenced him with a blow from the long black rod he held in his hand.

The bartender cried out, raising his hand to ward off a second blow. “Stop that!” Paperwhite cried.

The Captain paused, looking her up and down with his red-rimmed, sticky, exhausted gray eyes. “Do you know what the cursed disease is? The plague?” he asked Paperwhite. She shook her head. “Do you know what a soul is?” Paperwhite did not move.

“Do you know what you are?”

“I’m Paperwhite,” she said. “I’m a vogue girl.”

“Things like you are the reason why we’re all dying,” the Captain snarled.

The bartender had begun to creep away. The Captain reached out fast as a snake once more, pointing the long bar at the bartender’s cheek. Paperwhite saw terror in her bartender’s face, and she started forward, but the Captain barked, “Stay back!”

Paperwhite stopped. A customer—bad though he was—had spoken very clearly. Her eyes met the bartender’s; his were pleading with her. Clearly, he wanted her to come to him, and the other one, this cruel Captain, wanted her to stay back. So, she wavered.

“Now,” the Captain said, “If I vaporize his head, what will you do?”

Paperwhite did not answer. She was not sure what vaporize meant. Perhaps it was meant something like the dust on the bar.

“Let him go,” she said. “You are a bad man.” This was unconscionable to say to a customer. What would happen?

“If I make his head go away,” the Captain persisted, “What will you do?”

“A man cannot live without a head,” Paperwhite said, feeling her lips growing cold, pressing them tightly together. This was the opposite of “smile.” She disliked the feeling. “In that case, I will weep, and call for the gendarmes.”

“There are no more gendarmes,” the teacher cried. “Paperwhite, come away from the bad man. Maybe then he’ll—”

“Shut up!” the Captain commanded. Then he dug the end of the long bar into the bartender’s cheek; the bartender cried out— Paperwhite looked into his dark eyes, remembering the kiss. She saw deep in him, remembering how his hand had felt in the small of her back, how warm his lips had been, how delightful that kiss had been, even as he was uncertain and afraid. What would it be like to kiss him now?

What would it be like? Then she understood what the Captain really meant.

“You’re a killer!” she said, moving forward. “Now I understand,” she said. “You wish to destroy his body, but you can’t destroy his soul. You are a very bad man and I’ll call the gendarmes now!”

“What is she saying?” the sweeper asked. Both the women clutched at each other. Paperwhite could not imagine why they seemed to be discouraging her from defending the bartender.

“What?” the Captain said, and the long bar dropped away from the bartender’s cheek to rest at the Captain’s side.

“You can’t kill his soul,” she said, stepping close to the bad Captain. “And you can’t kill mine!”

“What?” the Captain said again, as if she spoke a different language.

The other five soldiers moved in. Paperwhite felt their hard hands on her shoulders. She started to struggle, then she relaxed.

“You can do whatever you like to me. That is why I am here,” she said.

They tore at her shell-pink silk dress. Someone pulled hard on her long mane and Paperwhite felt a brutal burning on her scalp. A black-gloved, stinking hand grabbed her face and squeezed hard.

Then a voice, full of bitterness, cried out.

“Release her!”

“Captain, what? We’ll shred her here and now. No need—”

“Release her, or I’ll shred you!”

Paperwhite opened her eyes to see the bad Captain shoving the others. They let go of her face, released her body. The hurting hand slipped from her face. There was a sharp, salty taste in her mouth and her lips burned. She put the back of her hand to her mouth. When she looked at her hand, the skin was streaked deep red.

This was her blood.

“If you hurt my body, my body will stop,” she said. How strange her voice sounded! She sounded like the sweeper—all hard and cold and with nothing there behind it but fury.

“I should cut your body into tiny bits and throw them into the sea,” the Captain said.

“I dreamed that I heard the ocean, and that it was my blood,” Paperwhite said.

“You—” the Captain said. His stinking black-gloved hand was on her neck. He squeezed; Paperwhite closed her eyes.

“Don’t make her suffer,” the bartender cried, his voice hoarse.

The other five bad men began to laugh. Paperwhite felt the Captain’s hand crushing her neck. She opened her eyes and stared directly into his. His eyes, so full of misery and fear, so shot with red and yellow amidst the gray color of sickness and decay.

“You cannot kill my soul,” she said. She barely heard herself; and thought that he might have silenced her through his cruel hand. But she would not close her eyes, nor would she look away.

With a sudden cry, the Captain released her and staggered back.

“She’s not what they say,” he said, looking at his fingers in wonder, then back at Paperwhite. “Move away from her now!” he ordered the other five men.

“Look at her!” one of them said, pointing at her. “Look at that dress— those shoes!”

“She’s no vogue girl,” the Captain said. “She’s got a soul. I felt it in my hand.”

“Captain!” two of the others cried at once. “Let’s just kill her. Come on—”

“No,” he said. He took off his glove, and the long bar he held fell to the floor. A gun, she remembered. Paperwhite rubbed her burning neck and looked at it.

None of them save the Captain were looking at her.

Paperwhite drew her dress up with one hand, preparing to gracefully bend. She knelt, and picked it the gun. It was warm to hold, and very heavy.

“She’s got the gun!” one of the other men cried. They rushed forward, but Paperwhite pointed it at them exactly as she’d seen the Captain do earlier. She knew the gun was a very bad thing, but also that it was something that you could make other people do things with. It could shred them. Vaporize their heads.

“Please stay back,” she said. The bad Captain had hurt her neck, changing her voice in an unpleasant way.

She turned to the bartender. “Go back with the other two,” she said. “You will be all right back there.”

“You’re a baby!” the bartender cried. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, or how this—”

“Carlos, come!” the teacher cried. So the bartender’s name was Carlos. Paperwhite wished he had told her this before; it seemed as though things were so changed now.

Slowly, he retreated. When all three of them were together at the end of the bar, Paperwhite moved toward the semicircle of bad men.

“Give me the gun,” the Captain said, holding out his hand.

“You let her get it!” one of the men cried. The Captain silenced the man with a look. Paperwhite watched all of this as if she was outside of her watered-silk body. She felt almost as if she was about to laugh. An electric charge tightened her muscles, her back, her arm, and her fingers -— a fierce excitement that she could never have imagined before this moment. In all of her previous moments, she thought, moments that she could count in her whirling mind as fast as she could discharge the wicked gun and vaporize these bad men.

“Come kiss me,” she said to the Captain, smiling, though her lips and neck hurt so badly. “How do they call you? You seem so tired; I think you need a drink.”

She looked toward the bartender. Surely he would get behind that dirty bar now and wipe it clean, start to do his job the way he ought.

The Captain’s face was pure astonishment. Then he put his head back and began to laugh.

“She’s a vogue girl after all,” he said to the others. “Just crazy. Confused. Go on— take that—”

Casually, Paperwhite pointed the weapon at the man nearest her. She squeezed the trigger.

She was very surprised by how it pushed her back, and even more surprised to see how the man glowed, incandescent, like the loveliest lantern that anyone had ever lit along the Promenade, to light the merry way of revelers.

“Damnation!” the men cried, rushing forward, then rushing back when she raised the gun again.

“I think you should have all come armed,” Paperwhite said to the Captain. “You seem to be strong men, but why did only one of you come here with his gun today?”

“You devil whore!” the Captain cried.

“Please, it’s not respectful to speak those words here in public. There is a room in the back,” she said, indicating the rear of the bar with a toss of her head.

“They didn’t think we’d put up any resistance,” the bartender called out. “And we wouldn’t have,” he said.

“What are you?” the teacher asked. Paperwhite saw that her pince-nez were fogged.

“Paperwhite,” Paperwhite said. “You know that. You know me.”

The teacher shook her head. “No, we don’t,” she said.

“She’s a demon,” the Captain said. “I don’t know what you three have been doing, but we’ll be back. And we’ll burn this place to the ground!”

Paperwhite realized that he’d gathered his men, and they were preparing to leave.

“Please,” she said. “There have been no customers here for a long while. You must stay. Have a drink.”

But it was too late. They were once again in the doorway, but now the shadow-forms were going away.

“Please don’t go!” she called.

“We’ll come back and burn this pit to the ground!” the Captain called, and then they were gone.

Paperwhite turned to the three who cowered by the bar, only realizing after a moment that she ought to lower the weapon.

“Why does he dislike me?” she asked.

They didn’t answer.

Then, very quietly, the bartender stepped forward. “You can relax now,” he said. “I’ll pour you a drink.”

Paperwhite felt her cheeks flushing. Now came another smile. “Oh, yes,” she said, tossing her hair.

“Maybe you’d like to give me that sidearm,” the bartender said.

Paperwhite put her head to the side, then she shook it.

“No, not right now,” she said. Then she gathered her dress, furious to see how the men had torn it, and sat in the nearest booth, crossing her slender legs.

“Chartreuse please, Carlos,” she said after a moment. It struck her as the perfect name for her bartender.

Carlos took her hands in his rough, grimed ones.

“You must listen to me,” he said.

Paperwhite nodded. The firearm was on the table beside her snifter of chartreuse.

“You have only three days,” Carlos said. “You’re temporary. We’re permanent.” He looked toward the sweeper and the teacher who hovered nearby, looking on anxiously.

“Why don’t you give them a drink also,” Paperwhite suggested. “They seem very upset. I know they aren’t customers, but if I look around, it seems as though business has not been good lately.”

“Paperwhite, sweet,” the bartender said, gently squeezing her fingers. “There is no business. We’re just—”

“The grocer should be coming in now. Surely he—”

“The Arcturans killed him,” the bartender said looking at her with his dark, sad eyes.

“They could not kill his soul,” Paperwhite said. “I can only think that—”

“You’re not supposed to be able to think!” the sweeper cried, kneeling beside Paperwhite. She put her worn hand on Paperwhite’s lap. Paperwhite looked down, then looked into the woman’s plain face. What was bothering her so much? Paperwhite had driven off the bad men. All that remained was to wait until the real customers came in.

“Greta,” the bartender said to the sweeper. “You saw what she did. Do you honestly think this is a normal vogue girl? She’s ...I don’t know—”

“She’s a sign,” the teacher said, moving around the kneeling sweeper and putting her hand on Paperwhite’s shoulder. Her fingers felt warm and kind. Paperwhite could not help but smile at her.

“I am not a sign,” Paperwhite said. “I’m sorry to contradict you, but I saw a sign across the street. There is a sign in front of this bar. I am a—”

“I don’t mean that,” the teacher said in her patient voice. “I mean that you’re a sign that something is about to happen.”

“Yes!” Greta the sweeper, said. “They’re going to come back any minute and vaporize us all!”

“We should leave,” the bartender said. “You can come if you like,” he told Paperwhite.

“No!” Greta exclaimed. “I mean— she saved us, but they’ll be hunting for her. They won’t care about us. They’ll just—”

“I really didn’t think you were like that,” the teacher said to Greta the sweeper. “If you were in my classroom, I’d—”

“You don’t have a classroom any more,” Greta snapped. “I’ve got no reason to clean. And he —”she pointed at the bartender in rage, “He’s got no customers and hasn’t for months.”

“Just stop,” Carlos the bartender said, his voice weary. He looked again into Paperwhite’s eyes. “Listen to me,” he said.

“I will,” she said. But she slipped her right hand from his grasp and picked up the weapon; she was not sure exactly why.

He closed his eyes as if he was ready to sleep, then the lids fluttered and he opened them again. “Paperwhite, you have memories. They’re not exactly yours. They’re from all the girls who have been here before you. You understand things. Maybe a lot, maybe a little. I don’t know. I’m just a bartender.”

“Every moment I breathe, I understand more,” Paperwhite said gently.

“I don’t know why you’re so brave,” Carlos said. “I don’t know what gave you the idea to pick up that weapon.”

“It was the right thing to do,” Paperwhite said.

“You’re not even supposed to know right from wrong. You’re only here to please the customers. I can’t understand how you—”

“You’re a vogue girl!” Greta the sweeper cried, pinching Paperwhite’s leg. Paperwhite looked at her in irritation. Greta backed away.

“I know what I am,” Paperwhite said.

The others looked between themselves. “So tell us,” Carlos said after a moment.

Paperwhite remembered! What she was there for; what the gengineers had said before they sent her down the birthing tube. She was a very important person; she could help others and she must be very brave. Her bravery would shine forth and everyone would be healed. From the plague!

As they looked at her in the strangest mixture of wonder and fear, she said, “I’m incandescent.”

Then Paperwhite took her other hand from Carlos’ grasp and swung her legs out of the booth as Greta the sweeper moved aside.

“You may stay here,” she said quietly. She took the heavy sidearm and held it against her chest. “I’m going to look for the Captain.”

“Lord of all that is,” the teacher whispered.

The bartender shook his head.

Paperwhite felt a vague ripple of sadness as she left. She paused a moment in the bar’s entrance, watching the three small people as they stood together, hands clasped. For a moment, she wondered if they would try to stop her, but then she realized that they would not. And—could not.

Paperwhite’s feet had begun to ache after walking down the abandoned street for a long while. For each store that she passed that had a whole window, there were three with no windows at all. The street that she remembered as being so tidy, so shining clean, was choked with debris. Dried mud, rotting paper, and other things too awful for Paperwhite to name. Awnings hung askew, their shining fabric tattered and stained.

There was not a gendarme in sight; before, there had been one on every corner.

How could she be newborn, and yet have these memories? This was the first time she had walked down this street. She knew also that there was a deep urge for her to get back to the bar, to wait for customers, to hope that they would pull her onto their laps, dance with her, and run their fingers through her long mane of hair, laughing. She should wait there with her chartreuse, sipping its bitter green sweetness, smiling.

How foolish her beautiful pink shoes seemed now. She stopped, holding the heavy weapon at her hip, and looked down. She really ought to take them off.

Then, she realized she hadn’t the vaguest idea how. Hopping awkwardly, she tried to kick them away. And nearly fell.

She righted herself, peering down the street. A group of men dressed in dark uniforms stood three or four blocks away. They saw her— she saw them. They broke into a dead run, shouting.

Paperwhite waited.

They came close enough so she could see their faces, then they slowed, and finally stopped.

They all held weapons exactly like hers. She searched their faces, and among them recognized the bad Captain, and two of the others who had come into the bar. But this was a much larger group.

“Hello,” she said. “Will you try to vaporize me now? I will vaporize you.”

“That’s her,” the bad Captain said.

“You never told me what you were called,” she said to him. “I know you’re not a real customer, but even so.”

He smiled in his cruel way.

“Marron, son of Chretien,” he said. “You can’t deceive us. We know what you are.”

Paperwhite looked gently at him. “That is a proud name,” she said. “I believe that you Arcturans have had hard lives.”

The men looked between each other, wondering. “Captain, what is she?” one of them said. “Maybe we should—”

“Do this slowly,” the Captain snarled. “Come with us, woman,” he commanded her.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Paperwhite said.

“Or you’ll vaporize me? That’s killing,” the Captain said. “Killing makes you bad.”

“I am not like you,” Paperwhite said, feeling her voice growing small.

“No,” he said, laughing. “But we’ll soon put—”

“You can’t take my soul. And I’m not sure that you have one.”

The other men looked at each other in alarm. “Captain—” one of them said, aiming his weapon at Paperwhite.

“No,” the Captain said, staying the man by raising his hand.

“Little woman,” he said, speaking once more to Paperwhite, his face crumpled with exhaustion and lined by what she thought was despair, “I don’t know what has come over you. But we’ll find out.” Then his expression changed completely, and he smiled at her, an open, friendly grin. Almost without realizing it, she found herself tossing her hair and smiling back at him.

“I have a question,” she said. “An experienced man like you ought to know. The bartender said that I was temporary, and he was permanent. What did he mean?”

“He means,” the Captain said, moving forward in his quick, snakelike way, grabbing Paperwhite’s arm before she could squeeze, before she could vaporize him. Then he had her, whirling her around, lifting her off her aching feet, his arm like an iron band around her shoulders and collarbone. “That you are going to die very soon whether or not I cut you into chunks of bleeding flesh.”

“Oh,” she said. Something started hurting her eyes then, and she blinked and blinked, but it would not stop.

“Captain!” one of the men cried. “Look!”

His rough beard scratched her face, and she smelled the stinking black glove again as he turned her halfway around. Someone pried the weapon from her fingers.

“Look,” he said. “She’s crying.”

“No,” one of the others said.

“Yes!” he said. And a vile black-gloved finger wiped at her cheek.

“These creatures don’t cry. They die like sheep,” one of the other men said, shock clear in his tone.

“What are you?” the Captain asked in a whisper.

“Incandescent,” she said, whispering back.

He made a strange noise in the back of his throat, and at first, she thought he was going to try to kiss her. “I’m not going to kill you,” he said, very softly, so that only Paperwhite could hear. “In three days you are dead, so I’ll watch you and wait.”

His hand was cruel, like a piece of iron crushing her shoulder. He shoved her roughly forward, and the other men parted, looking at her as if she could kill them with a look, their despairing, dirt-smeared faces marked by terror and wonder, and not a small amount of hate.

The hate hurt Paperwhite more than anything else. More than her poor, sore feet, and more than the terrible bruised marks matching the bad Captain’s fingers marring her slim shoulder. More than the point of the vicious weapon jabbing in the small of her back. More than tripping on her pretty pink shoes, and falling to scrape the palms of her hands and elbows in the filthy street.

She saw a bright light then, like a bursting firework over the Promenade, and it was very warm. She thought about it, tried to think warm, happy thoughts. She remembered the pony then, the beautiful creature with a mane the color of her hair. She remembered green fields, and the scent of long, sweet rain.

“Do you like to run?” she asked the Captain, who was walking beside her, holding her elbow in a cruel, crushing grip so she could not get away. “Without your clothes. It feels so nice and free.”

He looked at her as if she was insane.

“Where have the gendarmes gone?” Paperwhite asked Captain Marron the cruel Arcturan. He sat at his desk in his tent on the Promenade, and she sat beside him, her legs crossed, her hands shackled behind her back. Her slender wrists ached. The point of one of her heels dug painfully into her calf. But it would have been rude to show her discomfort, so she tried to smile instead of grimace.

“They’re mostly dead,” Captain Marron said. “The ones who are left are protecting the Oligarch. Let them,” he said in a bitter voice. “He’ll be dead soon enough. Then we will storm the Centrality.”

“That’s where everything is decided!” Paperwhite exclaimed. “The Oligarch is our leader! Why would you want to—”

“He’s not our leader. We are at war,” Marron growled. “They have the cure for the disease. They won’t share it.”

“What disease?” Paperwhite asked.

“The plague, you idiot!” he cried, turning and shaking his fist at her.

Paperwhite felt like someone had stabbed her right through her ribs. She was not an idiot. She would rather that he would have hit her with his fist. Slowly, she began to realize the hurt that words could do, and how cruelty was more than a balled fist, or the killing the Arcturans spoke of so often.

“What is the plague?” she persisted. She would not let him know how he’d hurt her.

“The thing that’s killing us all, fool. Not that it’s any concern to you. You’ve only got one day left.”

“How do you know that?” she asked. She tried to toss her hair, but it did not work, not with her hands held behind her back.

“Because you’re only temporary!” he screamed. Then he moved to strike her with his open hand.

“Slapping me won’t make you feel any better,” she said.

This time, he screamed something, but she couldn’t make out any words. His face flushed deep red, and then he sat sideways on the chair and buried his head in his hands, muttering something else that Paperwhite couldn’t understand.

“What if I don’t die?” she continued.

“You’ll go to bloody jelly,” he growled. “I’ll enjoy watching it.”

“You will?” she said.

“Can’t you get it through your stupid head? You’re a plaything for men in a world that is no more. This plague, this whole war— it’s ruined this lazy planet. We tried to reason with them— they wouldn’t listen.”

“If you yell, it’s hard for others to understand,” Paperwhite said.

Captain Marron lifted his head, looking at her with such fury that she scooted away, her heart pounding.

“If we could just get to those gengineers, they’d cure us. Or die!”

Paperwhite thought for a moment. The words echoed in her head.

“The gengineers made me,” she said.

“Well, of course,” he replied.

“No, I mean specially. This is—”

“What?” he said. He got down on the floor beside her. “What’s in your head?” he said, taking her shoulders.

“Don’t hurt me again,” she said.

Something came over his angry face, and he relaxed his grip. His bare hands did not stink the way his gloves had. Perhaps he wanted to kiss her. It was so hard to tell, away from the bar, in his rough, messy tent out on the Promenade, the filth-scattered, bivouacked, ruined Promenade that had once been so lovely.

“The gengineers made me,” she repeated. “I remember, from the birthing tube.”

“What is it?” he said, leaning closer. “Tell me, and I’ll be nice to you. We have some sweets. Would you like that?”

“Yes!” she said, suddenly feeling a strange burst of excitement. She did love sweets. Perhaps they were from the Chocolatier! Customers sometimes brought those for her. Then she shook her head. She had to try to keep things straight. They’d brought sweets to one of the other Paperwhites. Not to this Paperwhite, not now. She looked at the Captain, smelling his sweat, vaguely salty and musty.

“You could be a nice man if you tried,” she said.

“Tell me about the gengineers and I’ll try very hard,” he said.

“I am not a stupid woman,” she said. “I don’t care what you think.”

He sat back on his haunches and stared, shaking his head.

“I truly don’t know what you are,” he said after a moment.

“I told you,” she said.

“You whispered something,” he said. “I didn’t understand.”

“Tomorrow, I think,” she said very quietly, hearing her voice so light and slight, amazed at the words.

“You’ll go to jelly,” he said.

“No,” she said. “It will be different. I am incandescent.”

“Hopeless!” he cried. Then he stood, grabbing her under the arms and hauling to her feet. He pushed her roughly in the direction of the rank, unclean cot that the men had set up for her in his tent. “Lie there! Sleep— or not. I don’t care. I’m going back to work.”

“All right,” she said quietly. She had remembered the charge of the gengineers. She’d cure many people, if she was very, very brave. But if he was going to be so cruel, she saw no reason to tell Captain Marron. It was very sad, she thought as she curled on the cot, trying to position herself so that her arms and feet did not ache so badly.

In her body lay the cure to this terrible disease that had caused so much hate. The gengineeers had figured out how to make things right. Not that this wicked man would listen to her. Captain Marron— idiot!

Light flooded over her face. So warm, Paperwhite smiled to feel it. In the morning, it was lovely to feel silk and light washing over your gentle flesh. These were gifts to the living, she thought in her half-dream.

She opened her eyes, realizing that she lay on the rough, reeking cot, and her arms were like dead branches twisted behind her back. Her delicate feet were swollen in her pretty pink shoes. How was she to take them off now? Her hands were crushed behind her back, swollen just like her feet. She must look so ugly, she thought. Her hair felt like a filthy towel thrown over her cheek.

Strands of pony-golden hair, but dirty, not clean, draped lankly over her face. They formed bars that she peered through to see Captain Marron, a towel around his waist. He wore no shirt. His legs were bare, wax-white where they were free of straight pale brown hair that reminded her of a small dog’s fur. His chest was also pale, and covered with the same sort of hair, only there it was curlier, and some of it was not brown, but white, right in the center, where his heart could have been. Paperwhite did not think that he had a heart, but she didn’t say so.

She said, “I’m thirsty.”

“Too bad,” he said. “You’ll be gone soon, so it doesn’t matter.” “This is my third day,” she said, realizing her throat was very dry. “Please,” she said. “Be kind. Give me something to drink.”

He didn’t move, and didn’t reply. Then he turned abruptly, holding the towel tight, and went to the tent flap, barking that he needed water.

Someone came. Then he was back, holding a cup to her lips. His other hand went under her head, supporting it so she could drink.

The cup was rusty, the water stale, but any water was like sweet rain after running in the fields. She drank greedily, the water spilling over her sore lips, staining her pink silk dress. Then she felt his fingers drawing her hair away from her face. She drank more. Then it was gone.

“Enough,” he said.

“Are you going to watch me die?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. He went to his desk, setting the cup down with a clatter. He turned his simple chair and sat sideways on it, watching her with his elbow on his knee, chin cupped in his hand.

“You are a bad man,” she said. “You have no soul.”

“You’re the one without a soul,” he said cruelly. “You’re a piece of living trash. The filth that made you caused this disease.”

She said nothing. Maybe if she stared at him long enough he would turn away in shame.

They stayed that way a long while. Paperwhite decided that he would not turn away. So, she closed her eyes and thought of running like a pony in the green field, with the grass slapping around her hooves. Imagined running naked, with the wind all around, caressing her body.

It was lovely. She would have liked more water, but she knew that he would not give her any if she asked.

“Do you have a wife?” she asked him suddenly.

“No,” he said.

“Why not?” Paperwhite didn’t know why this subject had occurred to her, but she remembered talks with customers, and sometimes that they liked to speak of their wives. Paperwhite remembered that she had been a very good listener.

“She’s dead,” Captain Marron said. “When she realized she would bear no sons, she killed herself. On the way here.”

“Where are you from?” Paperwhite asked.

“Arcturus, idiot!” he cried, leaping out of the chair. “What is my wife to you?”

“Where is Arcturus?” Paperwhite asked. Her lips were so dry. Every time she moved them, they burned and she tasted blood.

He was pacing back and forth, his hands clenched. “Fifteen light years hence, and we barely made it. Our ships were—”

“You did well,” she said. “The gengineers said you were brave, but foolhardy.”

“They’re the fools! We’ll find the cure and leave them all to die,” he raged.

“Death is no death,” she said. That was what one of the gengineers had said. Then, her shoulders cracking with the effort, she squirmed on the cot and forced herself erect.

“Lie down,” he said, his eyes wide. “You’re going to die soon, so just—”

“No,” she said simply. “Tell me about your wife.”

He looked at her, his mouth wide. He didn’t look as though he had slept at all. Nor washed, nor shaved, though she knew that he must have cleaned himself, because he was wearing the towel.

“The Great Ship came,” he said, sitting awkwardly on his chair, running his hand through his gray-speckled brush of short hair. “She was one of the ones who studied it. I said, ‘destroy it!’ They didn’t. We didn’t. And she came back with it— this plague. The Great Ship was hunting you, not us, but we all had it. When we realized what it was, what had happened, the Ship had gone. And what remained is what you see. We fled here, hoping; we were betrayed. We’re all old. We’ll have no sons. We’re all dying.”

“But you thought we would have a cure.”

“Cure? Yes—at first. All lies. There was war on our planet,” he said. He had covered his face again, and when his hands came away, Paperwhite saw that his eyes were very red.

“There was war here too, after you came,” she said.

“Not like our war,” he said. “We’ve only begun.”

“What could be worse than this?” she asked. “I can’t understand.”

“Of course you can’t,” he said. “You’re an idiot.”

“What was your wife like?” Paperwhite asked after a moment.

He laughed, a brief, bitter sound. “Why do you care?” he asked.

“I am a good listener,” Paperwhite said. Something was burning inside of her stomach. She had not eaten for a long while. Perhaps the feeling was hunger. And she knew that she was already so thirsty. She thought perhaps she would ask for water again, but then she saw that Captain Marron was wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand, and that he looked like he was ready to talk again.

“She was plain,” he said.

Paperwhite listened.

“Her hair was short, hmn,” he said, making a chopping motion at the base of his neck. “Brown-colored. Her eyes were—” Then, he stopped. Tears streaked his cheeks. “You poor little fool,” he said. “Do you know I can’t remember the color of her eyes?”

“I think they were brown too,” Paperwhite said.

He looked at her, wondering. “I think you’re right,” he said.

“Go on,” Paperwhite said. The burning had changed to a horrible cramping feeling. She nearly cried out, and bent almost double. When the pain passed, she sat up again, and he was standing near.

“What is it?” he said.

“It hurts,” she said. “Deep inside.”

Then he put his hand under her chin and lifted her face, looking into her eyes.

“Maybe it’s starting,” he said. “Maybe this is what happens. I don’t know— I really don’t know of your ways and we’ve never—”

“You’ve killed all the ones like me you’ve found, haven’t you?” she said.

He nodded.

“Why did you?” she asked.

“Because you were abominations,” he said. “The evil here, the genetic engineering— it’s what the Great Ship wanted to destroy. That’s why they launched that plague. To rid the world of things like you, if it wasn’t for—”

“The gengineers said that wasn’t true. The Shapers that made the Ship are alien creatures, enemies of all other life. Why can’t you understand that?”

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to confuse me,” he said.

Paperwhite started to speak again when another pain exploded and she cried out, trying to curl inside of herself to make it stop. She felt his hands fumbling, then felt the shackles breaking free, but she couldn’t move. She slumped against him, her body fire and agony.

“Please be good to me,” she whispered.

Then she felt his arms around her, and her body rocking back and forth. She heard words, something like singing, something like a lullabye, and her eyes were open, but all she saw was a blinding light, and beyond the words, the sound of glass shattering. Her body was being turned inside out. An enormous hand had taken hold of her and was lifting her out from the inside, on and on and on.

Paperwhite felt something slipping, as though she was taking off her dress, but it was more than that, and the brightness flared like the center of a sun. She felt herself rising; perhaps she was flying, not running, and at once, she could see. She was ...above...looking downward.

She saw Captain Marron hunched over a delicate figure, hair tangled and draped across a filthy, rumpled cot. Shackles lay at his feet. The chair was tossed aside carelessly. He looked up, his face twisted. At first, she thought he was angry, and perhaps that he was crushing the life out of the small body that he held. Then she realized that the emotion that marked his face was grief. And that his eyes begged for something that she could not understand.

Then the figure in his arms began to glow.

He brushed the hair away from the delicate face. Paperwhite saw the face begin to shine, lit from within with a warm, golden glow.

“It’ll be all right,” Captain Marron said, caressing the glowing figure. “Don’t die. Please—”

Paperwhite listened as hard as she ever had. She heard the beating of her own heart, fluttering and trembling. She heard his heart too, faster and faster, and felt the sour taste in the back of his throat, sensed his desperation.

“I’m not dying. I was never alive,” she said, but she realized that she had no lips and she had no idea how she was speaking, or even what she was. Now. The figure he held had been Paperwhite.

“Run with me!” she cried. And watched as his pale body also began to glow.

“Don’t die,” Captain Marron pled. “Please, I didn’t mean to do this. Not like this.”

And Paperwhite, no longer part of her glowing body, looked down upon the grieving man. Captain Marron, fighter for the Arcturans, the crippled, childless band of remnants, dying of an alien plague. Captain Marron, bringer of fear, dissolution and death to the teachers, the sweepers, the bartenders, the gondoliers, and even vogue girls.

“I came for you,” she said, moving her lips that never were. “Captain Marron. To make you well.”

“I’m dying!” he cried as a crowd of his soldiers burst into the tent.

“Don’t be a fool,” Paperwhite whispered. “You are living again.”

And so Captain Marron was, holding the limp body of the now-fading girl, her golden hair draping over his shoulders, shoulders that trembled with wonder and with weeping.

Paperwhite watched from above, her newfound vision slowly fading, as he spoke to the others, his face washed clean and made fresh by the light.

“It’s what she said,” he said, trembling, holding her fading body as if they were both a tableaux, made for such viewing.

Paperwhite had become packets of light. The only possible cure for the alien plague.

One by one, Captain Marron’s men stepped forward into the light, to touch him, and her, and be made whole and alive, as Captain Marron covered the girl’s translucent body with his towel, and began to gently unbuckle her pink shoes, and slip them from her clear, delicate feet.