Glimmering

He walked to Trip and took him by the hand. Involuntarily Trip shrank from him. He expected something dry and scabrous; a crudely illustrated church pamphlet featuring Eve and a boa constrictor leapt unbidden to his mind. Instead Leonard’s hand was muscular and smooth, his lingering touch feather-light as he eased him from the chair.

“Hey,” he said gently. He looked into Trip’s eyes, brushing a wisp of blond hair from his forehead and letting his hand rest for a moment on the boy’s cheek. “It’s okay. Really, I don’t bite. You’ve probably had kind of a sheltered life, huh? You Xian kids. But this’ll be fine, it’ll go really well, and when we’re done GFI will sell every other act they own to buy this disc. So just try to relax and enjoy it—”

As he talked he steered Trip through the maze of recording equipment until the boy stood in front of the white screens. “You’ve never done this before, right?”

Trip shook his head.

“Good. It’s better that way. Not so self-conscious.” Leonard hunched behind a tripod and adjusted a series of lenses. One of the technicians switched off the TV; they pulled their chairs closer to the monitors and began playing with keyboards and dials. “What we do is, we get some footage of you, dancing or whatever. Picking your nose. I mean, you can lie there asleep if you want to, it doesn’t matter. Later it all gets jacked up on computer. They just want something to work with. Get your essence, right?

“That’s for the IT stuff. Me, I want to take some pictures.”

Trip glanced at the technicians. “You just want me to stand here?” he asked doubtfully.

“Whatever,” one of the young men said.

“I don’t.” Leonard’s hazel eyes glittered. “Pure white light: that’s what I want. Wait…”

He reached for a leather satchel plastered with Orgone holograms and shiny new Blue Antelope decals. “Music, you’d like that, right? Here—”

Leonard tossed something at one of the technicians. A moment later a haze of feedback filled the room.

Trip cleared his throat, took a few practice steps in front of the screen. “You’re a photographer, huh?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

Leonard disappeared behind a huge black lens. “Sociocultural pathologist, actually.”

Trip stared blankly. “Photography’s dead,” Leonard went on. There was a series of soft clicks, a faint humming from one of the more dangerous-looking tripods. “Everything’s dead. The world needs an undertaker. Atlantis sinks, Pompeii burns—I’m there. I’m doing some stuff for Blue Antelope now. You know them, right? All you little Xian apocalypse nuts. Portfolio called Vanishing Act. Last month I got this thing in Ruwenzori. Dwarf otter-shrew, gorgeous. I’ve got some proofs here, check ’em out—”

He grabbed yet another bag, pulled out a folder, and handed it to Trip. Clear plastic sleeves held Cibachrome prints of a small lithe brown animal emerging from a stream. Its most distinguishing feature was a bristling mass of whiskers around a bulbous nose.

Leonard peered over his shoulder and sighed. “Micropotamogale ruwenzori. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Trip glanced up to see if he was joking. “It looks like a rat,” he said.

“It’s not. See its nose?” Leonard’s finger stabbed at a print. “It works like a hydrofoil, sniffs out little crabs and things in the water. This is the last one, probably—that’s why I was there. Blue Antelope’s filed a lawsuit—there’s a big fight going on, whether it should be put in a lab so they can save its genoprint or just leave it there. In case another one shows up.”

He laughed and turned to the next photo, showing a fan-shaped array of bones with shreds of flesh between them, like a desiccated leaf. “That’s a horseshoe bat. Or was. Rhinolophus ruwenzori. Another interesting nose. I was a little late for that one. Fortunately I have a patron who prefers them that way. Dead, I mean. Really the last of their kind.”

Trip grimaced. “But they’re so ugly.” He looked up and saw Leonard staring at him, his green-flecked eyes narrowed.

“No, darling,” Leonard said in a very soft voice. Carefully he put aside the portfolio, then took Trip’s chin in his hand and pulled him forward, until he was only inches from Leonard’s face. Trip swallowed. He glanced out of the corner of his eyes to see if the technicians were watching, but they stared raptly at their monitors. Leonard’s fingers traced the outline of the cross branded upon his forehead, then his jaw, lingering on the soft hollow of his cheeks.

“You’ve got it all wrong, Trip,” he murmured. “They’re not ugly. They’re the most beautiful things in the world. But you and I—”

His fingers tightened. The nails dug into Trip’s flesh until the boy cried out, trying to twist away. “—you and I, Trip? We’re dirt.”

Trip could feel his jawbone shift beneath Leonard’s grip, his teeth grinding together like misplaced gears. “Just dirt,” Leonard repeated, his tone dreamy. Trip flailed helplessly, until Leonard wrenched his hand away.