And I knew, too, why they were here: which was to right a wrong (as they perceived it) and to recreate their origin—to play God. And to reinvent evolution as they saw fit.
None of which mattered as the flames licked our crosses and Blake resumed playing: picking and sliding and working his instrument like a virtuoso; causing the audience to cheer and make horn-hands. Lending our deaths a soundtrack as the wood started to heat and the wind began to gust and I looked at Linda to find her staring up into the storm—a storm through which a vast, black object (an object shaped like a rounded arrowhead) could be seen, blotting the sun like an eclipse, rotating—ponderously, almost imperceptibly—like a giant Ouija planchette.
“Is that—is that part of it?” —Linda, bound only several feet from me a
