Even on its own, this would be the strangest offer you've ever received. That the offer is coming from the golems--who have been chasing you and trying to turn you and your friends into the kind of thing they are--only makes it all the more jaw-dropping.
But though you continue to badger Colonel Lord--his golem, actually--for the "small print" on the offer, he continues to insist that there is none. "I don't understand why don't just accept this offer, Will," he says. "There's the door. No one is stopping you."
What's stopping you, you realize, is your mission. Frank and his colleagues had warned you that there was only a chance of success, but you're still determined to see it through. You want the colonel to try turning you into a golem--into one of them--so that you can infiltrate their ranks and battle them from within. Of course you don't say that to the colonel, which leaves you unable to explain why you won't accept his offer.
You can only fold you arms. "I don't know what game you're playing," you say. You jerk your chin at the door. "But I really don't want to leave this place and find out afterwards."
He frowns, more in puzzlement than anger, it seems. "You really don't want to leave?" He cocks his head and regards you steadily. "Well, there's another offer I could make you. You could work with us."
Your stomach flips. Here it comes, the threat to turn me into a golem. "How?"
He looks at you keenly. "Is that what this is about, Will?" he asks softly. "You stayed while the others ran. Maybe you changed your mind about working with them? You've seen that all the changes going on are really not that important. They're hardly noticeable, in fact."
Your chest tightens a little in horror. Does he actually think you might be looking to switch sides?
"Let me show you how you could help us, Will." From a pocket inside his jacket he takes a folded piece of paper. Once he's got it opened up, you recognize it. It's one of the sigils that you'd copied from the book.
"We searched the house where your conspiracy had been meeting--the one by campus, I mean--and we recovered these. You copied them out of the book, you know, and used them. The copies we make, they don't work. We can't find anyone who can make them work. We've even--" His voice tightens a little at the words. "We've even had real people copy them, and the copies they made don't work. But the copies you make do.
"This one is particularly useful," he continues. "It slows us down, a lot, having to use that book each time we bring someone back from the grave. If we had lots of copies, though-- If you supplied us with lots of copies of this spell and a few of the others, it would help us tremendously."
So here it is. A threat to do something to you if you don't slave away for them making sigils. Although, you have to reflect if you're being honest, you've not heard the "threat" part yet.
"Why would I do that?" you demand. "Make it easier for you to kill people, kill all the people in the world? And when I'm done you'll just kill me."
"We're not killing all the people in the world, Will--"
"Well, turning them all into golems."
"Yes, we're doing that, but not to all the people. That would be foolish."
"So you're only doing it to people in Saratoga Falls?" you ask suspiciously.
"No, Will," he sighs. "We're going worldwide. But it would be stupid of us to get rid of everybody.
"Will," he says when you wrinkle your brow at him, and his throat constricts over some very hard emotion or other. "The fact is that we can't make anything. Oh, we can make machinery and build buildings and write software and books and music and poetry. But we can't make people." With sudden force, he rips a bit of hair from his head and throws it onto the table. "It's not only our hair that disappears. It's also blood and semen. Anything that comes off these bodies. We are sterile, Will. If we replaced everyone in the world, that would be the end of the human race. Not just of each individual, but of the entire species. No more reproduction, so no more babies and no more children.
"And we think these bodies continue to age. So what would happen in fifty, seventy years after we had replaced everyone? We would all die again." His voice drops to a whisper. "Which none of us wants to happen. Not again."
He holds your eye for a long time, as though challenging you to question him. You think you get the gist of what he's saying, though, and keep quiet.
"So you see, we wouldn't replace everyone. Not even a majority, not even close to a majority. The vast number of people would go on with their lives, entirely unaware of our presence. We will occupy key positions, of course, so as to maintain control. But the others will live and procreate and raise children. As our bodies age, we will switch into new ones, just by switching masks."
"So you're just parasites," you snort.
"I suppose," he says, and briefly there is a low growl in his voice. "But parasites serve their purpose. So could we. With us secretly running things, and with us needing the human race to continue, life would be much safer for all the rest. There would not be any world-ending wars, and no incidents to precipitate them."
"You're still killing people," you insist.
"Some must die so that others can live. It's always been that way. This is just a different way. We do not want to replace those whose fertility guarantees the survival of--" He sighs, and shrugs. "The survival of our hosts. Yes, we are parasites. But no one values the life of its host more than a parasite does. And we've been dead. We value the living more than the living value themselves."
He falls silent for a moment before continuing with what sounds like a new thought. "And mostly we'd be replacing the parasites that are already out there."
"What parasites?"
"Those who take and take and take, and give nothing back. Do you know what the population replacement rate is in advanced countries?" Irritation, even anger comes into his voice. "They're dying, Will, the Russians and the Japanese and the Italians and all the others. If present trends continue, in a century the German language will be spoken only in Hell. It is because they do not reproduce. Too many move to the city, and they go to parties and they invest in vacation homes and expensive co-ops and save against the day that they can retire at fifty and dribble away the rest of their days on a beach somewhere. But they do not reproduce. They take what the species has given them and selfishly spend it on themselves, and they plan to continue taking it in their old age, from the children that others have borne and raised. But they will not have children, and so they give nothing back!"
He masters himself. "Those are the ones we would be taking, and even now have started to take. We have a solid foothold now, and can afford to start being choosy. It is the parasite class we have targeted, mostly. Look at the childless hedonists you see on TV, and ask yourself how they are any different from what we would be in their place. Ask what they give that we couldn't. They are already like us. Practically dead, for they do not make life."
They would be real, and a golem wouldn't be, you find yourself thinking. But it's a bit of a struggle. You are staggered by these surprising arguments.
The colonel continues. "You could help us, Will. It will happen anyway, but you could speed it. And you seem to have some ability, some mastery over that book. So you see, the last thing we want to do is harm you. We want to keep you very safe, in fact. And if you understand what we're doing, and why it doesn't do any real harm, and why it does a lot of good, maybe you will help us."
Maybe the way your face is twisting up expresses skepticism, for the colonel gestures you over to the mirror. "You asked earlier if you could have a new face and life. Would you like that? Work with us, and for us, and you can have one. You can have several, if you like, just as we can." He flicks a switch. The lights in the room go off, and the lights in a room on the other side of the glass go on. It is filled with a dozen people, standing in a line, facing you. They are all poised and confident.
Many of them you know: Seth Javits, Cindy Vredenburg, Cameron Huber, Anita Nuevo, David Kirkham, Faith Becker. Those that you don't know are cut from the same cloth, though older. Three men in their twenties or early thirties, broad of chest with handsome faces, two with a military bearing. Three beautiful women with strong breasts and hips and curves.
They all stare back, if not at you then at the mirror. "You can have any of them, Will," the colonel whispers in your ear. "Dozens of them. Any that we take. Movie stars. Pop stars. Celebrities. You could switch faces as you please, as you grow bored.
"If you help us, we will share everything we have with you. And it will be for the sake of humanity itself. We would be its protectors."
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