Why am I here then? Why was there any need for me to come? I don’t understand. If you didn’t want mediation—”
“You are here because you are still untainted,” said the woman.
“We had to go miles to find one who was,” said the boy.
“Untainted?” snapped Tim. “Do you actually think I could agree with your type of morality? That I’m going to watch you carry out mass murder?”
The eyes of the old man blinked, disappearing briefly into the fleshy pouches of aged skin. The thin mouth pursed its lips, and he said patiently, “That is not what we mean by untainted.”
“The word ‘receptive,’” said the boy, “might be more applicable. We assumed you would be receptive to us.”
Tim knew he wasn’t getting anywhere, and it crossed his mind that perhaps he had blundered into a trap. Maybe they always intended to assassinate an American official as their main goal. His panic rose like acid-burning vomit in his throat, and a gloved hand reached across the table and took his wrist. It took his arm gently, with no threat in the motion at all. But it happened so fast.
“You’ll leave here safe and sound in a few minutes,” said the old man.
“Do you remember your Greek mythology, Mr. Cale?” asked the woman near the doorway. She tugged on the winding folds of her wrap.
“Argus Panoptes,” said the old man. He let go of Tim’s wrist and began pulling off the mitten of his right hand.
“He’s a giant,” said the boy with a triumphant smile of white teeth, sounding for the first time like a child. He tugged off his knit woolen cap with the strings, and a few strands of his black mop were pulled up for an instant. Just like any boy.
“Servant of the goddess Hera,” said the woman. The English and Greek words sounded strange from that wise Asian face. Then her scarf was removed, her neck bare—
“Panoptes, meaning in Greek, ‘all seeing.’”
The old man’s glove was off, and he cast aside his woolen jacket as the classical reference finally clicked in Tim’s mind—
He pushed back his chair and jumped up. The wooden legs scraped the floor, and the chair timbered back with a crash.
Yes, Hera’s giant, his body covered with eyes.
And in front of him the old man stayed calmly in his seat, the dark forest green and mauve garment folds running like a toga over one shoulder, but the shoulder itself, his chest, his arms covered in eyes. There were eyes on the body of the woman. Eyes were blinking from the flat, adolescent chest of the boy. The effect was like seeing skin marked with a pattern of yellowish whiteheads, of boils, but each pupil had a lid and an eyelash, some of them blinking out of sequence with others.
The Indian soldier near the entrance backed away from the woman, one foot out the door.
“What are you people?” Tim whispered.
“We told you, it doesn’t matter,” said the boy. “Not now, in this moment. It’s sufficient that you are… receptive.”
“There is a cost for the rebalancing,” said the old man. “And so we have adopted an eye for each of these villagers who have lived in destructive blindness. Understand: we are not without a comprehension of degrees of guilt. Those who did less are the ones you found as you arrived. For the others…”
His gnarled hand reached into the drapery of his robes and slowly withdrew a dagger.
Oh, God. He grasped immediately what the man was about to do, and because it was impossible, he could not understand how to prevent it.
He was left to watch as the blade dug like a scalpel into the soft white of a blinking egg imbedded in his flesh, and Tim heard himself scream no no no as the old man hissed and gritted his teeth in genuine pain. Warm blood poured down the arm, hideously blinding more of the blinking eyes and dripping down to the sawdust floor, and Tim heard the corresponding wails from beyond the shelter.
“Stop it! Please stop it! You can’t believe this is right!”
“This is for those who did these unspeakable acts,” said the old man. “And for those who allowed them to happen, seeing is believing.”
The soldier made a guttural sound—not quite a yell but a kind of bark of his revulsion and fear. He ran out, and Tim heard his boots stomp in the moist earth. As the woman and boy brandished their own knives, Timothy Cale rushed past them into the rain. He knew where the soldier was going—the soldier was joining the others who had been guarding the SUV. People ran now into the main thoroughfare of the village as distant screams rose over each other. Shouts grew louder in the native dialect, and there was a string of gurgling cries. The soldiers could do nothing.
Tim couldn’t bring himself to step closer to the silhouettes of villagers, some staggering into the road, others falling to their knees.
All of them were clutching their heads, their fingers on their foreheads or at their temples…
Dazed in his shock, he looked back at the rectangle of spilled light from the doorway, and he saw a curving, trickling stream of blood pouring out. It mingled with the puddles of rain.
He couldn’t stop the impulse to be sick.
His eyes felt the salt-burn of tears, his forehead still soaked with rivulets of rain, while his throat was scorched with bile. He pulled himself up and forced his senses to register again, but this time the people of the village were missing. No, not all of them, they couldn’t be. Could they? The first ones, yes, he could tell that the first ones who had shouted and run into the street were… gone. A mysterious banishment that was the crowning touch of the strangers. But the others? A whole village gone. He heard the ugly metal chunk as one foolish soldier prepared his rifle to fire, but there was no staccato burst. Something stayed his hand, forcing a reappraisal.
You’ve got to do something, thought Tim. You can’t stay just a witness to this.
He started to run through the unpaved narrow streets, his shoes splashing through the puddles of mud and rainwater, looking for… he didn’t know what. Survivors, those who hadn’t been claimed yet. He had pleaded with them: There must be someone! At least one innocent here! He couldn’t find anyone. Bodies, yes. Bodies and more bodies like those they first spotted on arrival, each one with staring blue eyes, but others were missing. Others were taken. He felt a growing hopelessness—then panic, because the soldiers might start up the SUV and leave him behind. Through the sshhhh of the relentless rain, he spotted an old woman, curled up, hugging her knees near packed metal chairs behind a market stall table.
Oh, Christ, he didn’t speak the language. Maybe… Maybe if he just held out his hand, and if his tone was gentle enough, he could persuade her. “You have to come with me! It’s not safe for you here!”
She said something that sounded like a fatalistic complaint. Telling him he was mad, that it was pointless. Her voice was high and sharp and raw, the whine of a gnarled tree branch being snapped off. She was horrified at what was happening around her, but she couldn’t see escape.
“Please,” he called over the rain, still holding out his hand. “Please!”
After a moment, she picked herself up with an effort, her limbs trembling either from fear or the palsy of her age, stepping out from her hiding place. She could walk surprisingly quickly, but he wished she could run. They had to get away from this place. The strangers in the robes had either overlooked her or were busy reaping other souls. He found himself pulling her along by the arm, cursing himself for his fear.
He heard the small boy from a side alley, calling out for someone. Mother, father, it hardly mattered. Scared brown eyes under a mop of black hair, his tiny limbs at his sides, but his neck turning this way and that, looking, hoping… He was small, and given the diet and environment here, it