February, 1983 — Surrey, Engnd

  Six people stood atop Senate House in the pouring rain. Four of them were there at the invitation, if you could call it that, of Dr. Martell. Edith was there because Aric had asked someone from the team to be present.

  Afternoon was moving steadily towards evening as everyone stood motionless under umbrels, their faces turned towards Perimeter Road. The temperature was a brisk 2 degrees, but the steady breeze made it feel even colder.

  She wasn’t sure that they should even be where they were. There was a railing running along the outer perimeter of the roof—minimal protection at best on those occasions when workers needed access. Casual visitors weren’t allowed up here. How the door marked ROOF ACCESS — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY had come to be unlocked was anyone’s guess. But this was where Aric had requested they assemble for his demonstration, and Edith was sure that he had something to do with it.

  “What are you pying at, Martell?” Vice Chancellor Martin asked curtly, his free hand stuffed in his coat pocket as he shuffled his cold, damp feet.

  “If you’re pnning on throwing us over the edge it won’t secure your funding. And how would you expin it?” asked one of the Council members mockingly. He gnced at the other member and they both ughed.

  Dr. Weatherby spoke up indignantly in defense of his colleague. “Ed’s been a valuable member of my department for many years. Your disrespectful tone is insulting, and unprofessional.” The Vice Chancellor rolled his eyes, but said nothing further.

  Ed Martell had been quiet up to that point. He smiled weakly as he answered.

  “Nothing so dramatic as that, I assure you. The chancellor and the committee requested —really demanded— that we show progress if we wanted to keep our funding. We intend to do that.”

  He gnced at his watch.

  5:55

  “It shouldn’t be much longer,” he said.

  Not much longer, Edith thought.

  Five months of research, and they had only begun to scratch the surface of Aric’s—she still wasn’t sure what to call them. Abilities? Gifts? Powers? They’d even turned it into a drinking game—how many bels could they come up with?

  They’d collected blood samples, tissue samples, spinal fluid samples, brain matter samples, anything and everything they could sample. She thought he must have lost five pounds from all the samples they took. When the sampling became too painful for her to watch she closed her eyes and held his hand. She would hear his breathing catch and the pressure of his hand in hers increased slightly, but he never cried out.

  “Don’t cry,” he said once, his voice strained, when he saw the tears running down her face. “There’s a purpose to this. And it’s not that bad.”

  She loved him. She could admit that to herself finally.

  It had grown inside her a little more each day since they met. He built it steadily—with his humor, and kindness, and humility. He was immensely powerful, on a scale none of them had yet been able to quantify.

  In most people, that kind of power would have bred arrogance or conceit. But with Aric, it seemed to do the opposite. It made him more considerate. More reflective.

  He was generous—not just with his time, though he gave plenty of that, spending hours on an examining table under cold instruments and sterile lights. But with himself, too. With who he was. As a person, not just a subject.

  Her love grew like a seed pced in good earth—quietly, steadily, until one day it bloomed into something undeniable.

  And she could tell it wasn’t just her. She recognized it the moment she saw Delphine tutoring him in French—the softness in her voice, the quiet delight in her face.

  As her love grew, so did the pain she felt as she watched him submit to more and more tests.

  It was a secret love. Nurtured in private. Hidden from view.

  He was younger than her, though only by a few years. They were team members. But he was also their test subject. She had no idea if a physical or romantic retionship would be ethical. She had an obligation to the project to be clinical, dispassionate. Objective. She couldn’t do that while she watched him clench his jaw and grip the table edge with his free hand, the hand that held hers still gentle.

  I wonder if he knows? He could read my thoughts, but I know he won’t. Wouldn’t. But he’s not blind. He sees how I look at him, doesn’t he? How I find excuses to be near him, and touch his arm, or back.

  But she’d seen with her own eyes, often and repeatedly, Aric politely deflect the advances of both sexes over the st five months. She wondered if that was what he was doing with her. His way of letting her down gently. Don’t respond, just like in the pubs.

  She and Delphine had taken it upon themselves to act as his shield wall whenever they ended up at a crowded venue and he drew the usual amount of attention. He’d started to decline those invitations to go out with the group, feeling that he was spoiling the evening for everyone else. Hank and Carlos would always perk up when that happened, at least until Edith said that if he wasn’t going she wasn’t going either, which made Carol happy to have Carlos to herself.

  The mood of their group changed markedly when Dr. Martell called them together to inform them that the university was not happy, that if they could not show some progress to justify their continued funding they would be cut off, and their group disbanded.

  “How can they do that?” Edith had argued loudly. “They have no idea what we’re doing in any case. Can they even begin to understand our work, let alone critique it?”

  “Do we want them to know?” Alex asked. “We have a human test subject. Do they know that? And how will they feel about it if they don’t?”

  “Human-ish,” Hank said with a smirk and a sulk.

  “He’s right, though,” Carol added. “We never went through the proper channels to do human testing. We threw a one-ton word sad at them instead of an abstract. We could have hidden a blue whale under it.”

  Ed nodded in agreement. “Carol’s right. It was my decision not to expose Aric’s identity. It was one of the conditions for him joining us. I won’t go back on that now. We’ll have to think of something else. Something to show them that gets us some breathing space.”

  “We have the biomathematical model that we’re building. And the energy resonance mapping data. The quantum phase estimations and probability distributions.” Carlos said. “We could present that.”

  “Or we could just show them him,” Hank said as his scowling face indicated Aric. Nothing would make him happier to get rid of the American. Then Edith would realize her mistake.

  The entire room erupted at his suggestion. Then everyone felt it, as a calmness that felt like warm water flowed over them.

  “Sorry,” Aric said in the silence that followed. His face had been in his hands a moment earlier. “My fault. It’s an unconscious reaction. I used to do that when my parents argued. It drove them nuts. I apologize.”

  Edith walked to him and pced her hand on his shoulder. His eyes looked into hers like a drowning man pleading for a life preserver.

  “Are you OK?”

  He sighed and then smiled at her, but she could see his tears. “Yes.”

  Then he stunned everyone.

  “Hank’s right. I think we should show them me.”

  “You’re sure?” Dr. Martell asked. “You don’t have to do this. We can think of something else.”

  Aric smiled. “They want to see something. We want them to see something. We’ll both get what we want. And they won’t know it’s me.”

  “What exactly do you have in mind?” Ed Martell asked.

  They had never seen him that way. He’d only ever been normal around them. Just another regur human being. They’d all read the reports, but this would be different.

  “I guarantee you, I know how to make an entrance,” Aric said with a grin before looking at Hank. “It was your idea. I think you should be there. We need someone from inside the family to support Dr. Martell.”

  “The chair of the Physics Department will be there,” Ed reminded him.

  “But he’s not family,” Edith said. Aric had started calling them that —even Hank— at their Christmas party. Alex scoffed at the idea at the time, but Edith could tell that it had touched him.

  Everyone could see the blood leave Hank’s face.

  “Leave me out of it. Whatever you’re pnning, just leave me out of it.”

  “I’ll go,” Edith offered without hesitation. She was still standing right next to him. She turned back and looked at his beautiful face as her voice dropped. When she spoke again she used the same tone of voice that she’d use to say, I love you.

  “I’ll go.”

  6:00

  It began as a sensation. Barely detectable at first, before growing stronger as the air around them seemed to hum. The rain had increased —the rooftop covered in water, but Edith was oblivious to her damp feet. The smell of fresh strawberries began to caress her senses. The sound of the rain was still present, but faded to background noise as she began to hear music. She could see from the looks on everyone’s faces that she wasn’t alone. It was happening to them as well. Even Dr. Martell.

  She’d read the reports. She’d heard it described. Mass sensory phenomena. It was one thing to read about it, it was something else to experience it firsthand.

  The humming grew stronger. The roof began to resonate as rippling geometries danced across the water—Chdni patterns, not etched by sound, but by something older and deeper, a force yet to be named.

  And slowly a glowing figure encased in a translucent sphere of energy rose over the edge of the roof.

  Holy God in Heaven, Edith thought as she got her first look at Aric in full regalia.

  The words formed in her mind, and she knew who had sent them.

  You know me better than that, I think.

  The rain continued to scatter off the energy sphere as he glided forward, propelled by no visible force, drawing closer to the small group. As his feet neared the surface, the sphere began to open, unfolding into an umbrel-like dome above them.

  The rain continued to fall, but only outside the rge circle protected by the dome. Aric continued to glow like a small human-shaped sun. If she hadn’t known in advance that it was him, she wouldn’t be able to tell. As the sphere opened, Edith felt her breath catch.

  It’s like watching a golden butterfly emerge from a cocoon made of starlight.

  His voice when he spoke was preternatural. It shouldn’t have echoed the way it did. There was nothing up here to reflect it back. Edith had a sudden realization that it was echoing off her mind, hers, and everybody else's.

  “I understand that some of you requested a progress report on Dr. Martell’s work. Is that true?”

  The vice chancellor and both the council members were stunned into silence. One of them looked on the verge of colpse.

  Vice Chancellor Martin’s awed voice broke the silence.

  “My God… we have no nguage for this.”

  Ed Martell was just as stunned as the rest. He’d spent five months working beside this man, studying him—never realizing what he was really dealing with. He’d been circling a sleeping tiger, blind to the danger coiled just beneath the surface. But now, it was on him to speak. His team’s future—and their funding—hung in the bance.

  He gnced at Jeff Weatherby. His friend and department chair returned the look but said nothing.

  Ed Martell turned back to the being in human form.

  “They’re just looking for reassurance that our work is progressing,” he said, the words feeling faintly absurd the moment they left his mouth.

  “What would you like to see?” Aric asked gently as he reached out a golden tendril towards Edith. He said it to the entire group, but she knew he was talking to her. It felt intimate. Almost romantic. “The birth of a sun? The death of a gaxy?”

  She reached out her hand and the tendril wrapped around it before moving up her arm. In that moment Aric drifted up, and she traveled with him. He drew her to him and wrapped his arms around her. His voice echoed in her mind.

  What can I show you?

  She answered in kind, without spoken words.

  You’ve already shown me everything I need to see. I love you.

  Aric’s eyes remained on Edith as he spoke to the two men and one woman who had huddled together. “Is that enough, or do you require something else?”

  “They’ll fund us for three years, with an option for another three.”

  Dr. Martell’s announcement was well received by the group.

  “What did you show them?” Carol asked Aric. She gnced at Edith and Dr. Martell, but neither spoke. Even if they had wanted to, neither possessed words sufficient to describe what they’d experienced.

  Once, during Sunday Mass when she was very young, Edith caught a glimpse inside the tabernacle. Through some trick of the light—or perhaps through the eyes of faith—her child’s mind believed she’d seen a sliver of heaven through that small door.

  The sense of awe she’d felt on the rooftop had been just the same.

  A glimpse of heaven.

  Aric shrugged. “Nothing really. I convinced them we were making progress.”

  Alex was the first to ask what the others were thinking.

  “Did you wipe their memories or something?”

  Aric grinned. “You know... that would’ve been a lot easier.”