The Last Days of New Paris

A bomb-blast. A raid from beneath. Thibaut glimpses fire and an explosion billowing up through the earth, an igniting plume, shoving into the tank-centaur, enveloping it in fire, flame that roars up, makes Fall Rot roar, too, in agony it doesn’t understand, goes up then stops, a frozen moment of conflagration. A still moment.

Which then as he watches reverses very suddenly and fast, like rewound film, and sucks everything away. Rushes back into the new chasm. Takes the tank-thing Fall Rot rushing with it, into the deep, leaving not a trace. Returns to the pit.

—

Thibaut lies coughing for a long time. A huge crater slides down into black. There is no tank, no tank-ruin, no too-big human torso visible. Thibaut stands.

A second percussion sounds, a quieter, crackling blast in another room close by, and he cowers. But it is quickly gone and Thibaut rises again.

“I got through to them,” Sam whispers. Thibaut’s ears are ringing but he can hear her. “This little gate cracked open. I got it wider.” With the energies of sacrifice. With what she did to Alesch. “They had to come up for this. For that…thing.”

She leans against a wall. Sparks burst from the machinery. A few researchers are still alive, are moving, crawling in the dust. “That,” Sam shouts at them, “was definitely against the fucking treaties.”

“You said they…your bosses…couldn’t intervene,” Thibaut says. “Or wouldn’t.”

“There was a block in place. You saw what the priests were doing until the manif…stopped them. And my bosses wanted to avoid confrontation. But I got through. And they couldn’t let that lie. There’ll be a serious diplomatic incident.”

Thibaut laughs at that a long time, hurting his wound. Even Sam smiles.

—

They stumble through the ruin while the Germans still alive crawl away from them. When he reaches it, Thibaut hesitates, then picks up the exquisite corpse’s head.

It is half as big again as his own, but fleshy and light as papier-mâché. It moves its eyes to watch him, sadly. Some last bolus of life. The train in its beard makes a little hffhffhff sound. The caterpillar does not pulse.

They go into the hallway. At the end is a cell containing a pile of terrible objects. Farmyard pieces, a rotting elephant head, leaves, tennis rackets, big-eyed fish, limbs, a pistol, a tiny figurine, a pile of saucepans, a globe.

“Those are all from exquisite corpses,” Thibaut says. A charnel heap of components, a grave of ripped-up manifestation. Opposite them is another bank of machines, an engine and a single bunk like a prisoner’s. Thibaut’s stomach heaves at the smell of decaying image.

“They’ve been harnessing what bleeds out of the manifs,” Sam says.

Three walls are cracked, chaotic. One side of the room is perfectly neat, perfectly, unnaturally tidy. Its window is unbroken, its wall papered.

“I heard another noise from here,” Thibaut says. He sifts through the pile with the barrel of his rifle. He probes with his hand and the soft decay of actualized dream fouls his fingers.

Sam smiles and Thibaut does not smile back. He is thinking of the Main à plume who died. He looks at the flawless wall.

“It must have just kicked out a lot of energy when your bosses blew up that thing,” Thibaut says.

She says, “It was an abomination.”

—

I saved Paris, Thibaut makes himself think. Destroyed a new utter demon. I saved the world. He feels flat. Outside, the sunlight hits them differently than it did within the old city.

Is this it? Are they done?

“Where are the soldiers?” he says.

They stagger on, alone and unmolested. They strain to hear attackers they are sure must be coming, but there is nothing. Relieved, confused, straining to stay alert, Thibaut and Sam haul past dirty broken buildings and rubbled corners. They keep their weapons in their hands in these ghost neighborhoods stained by war, wandering, Thibaut realizes, back toward the old arrondissements.

And then abruptly they are in a jarringly perfect stretch of Paris. The loveliest town and houses. Perfect fronts, vibrant colors, crackless. Even the sky seems brighter.

Sam and Thibaut come to a bewildered stop. Where is everyone? And how is this quarter so clean?

The streets are empty, the sun is high, the shadows are small. The streets feel scoured.

Why don’t we have to stay down? Thibaut thinks they should be creeping through the shells of buildings. Where are soldiers? He looks at pretty houses without war damage.

“Something doesn’t make sense,” Thibaut says.

“Really?” Sam says. “Just one thing?”

They walk on a long time. Immaculate undamaged streets. They see no one.

They pass a big hotel. It is picturesque, spotless, deserted.