28.4

 

The mantle contracts again, the pressure flowing down from her uterus into her cervix and flushing through all the clusters of nerve endings gathered in her vaginal canal. She winces as the feeling flows through her – she equates it to being slammed in the ovaries by a penis the length and weight of a baseball bat. It is the mantle’s way of warning her that this is just the beginning and the crowd is not yet safe, and if the crowd isn’t safe, the world isn’t safe. What she has achieved is only the first wave, and another is approaching at the speed of a freight train

Roisin lifts her head, her consciousness flowing out over the crowd. She can’t yet tell where the next threat will come from, just that there is another pivot in the world’s possible future, or lack of it, right here. She scans the crow, spotting the mother leaving the area with her child, hurrying past protesters who are still pouring into the intersection. There are more police officers, too. She isn’t the only one who expects there to be trouble here.

On the podium, the speaker is also scanning the assembled crowd. She can feel his awareness like a fog, the hanging miasma kind that hangs over wetlands when the sun hits them on a cold morning. She deftly avoids it, but it has the feel of tentacles spreading outwards like an angler fish, trying to tempt prey in the infinite night of the ocean depths.

The mantle pulls her deeper into the crowd. The world turns on moments like these, every second a wave of possible futures, all of which must be examined and tested before she can move on. One man searches for his ex-girlfriend among the supporters, intending to beg her to take him back after his infidelity. Another has donated thousands to the cause and wants to ensure his investment brings him a few lucrative contracts. One of the speaker’s security detail is planning a weekend away with someone else’s wife, though he is completely unaware he’s being set up by an extortion ring.

The mantle of Knowledge does not relax. It tightens again, sending another pulse through her vagina, making her Kegel muscles contract and sending a pressure wave up her spine which lights spark behind her eyes. Its awareness flares, sharp and luminous, spreading through the crowd like a net of light.

Another wave, and Roisin nods, her throat tight like she is trying not to swallow, and then she feels it.

The second imbalance is not fear but fury; the fury of a mother whose violent ex-partner has been granted custody of their son; the fury of a bear whose kill has been stolen by a mountain lion; the fury of a man who knows who keyed his car but has no proof to convince the police of it.

It is the kind of fury that sits in the chest like a lump of grit, gradually being covered by nacre until it is so large it stops the functioning of its host.

The kind of fury that does not need a spark — only an excuse to explode. Roisin feels it rising from the back of the crowd like heat from asphalt, from a cluster of people whose anger is not about today; not about this protest, or even this issue, but much older than both. This is a fury like Katrina destroying the Levees and it is about to break.

Roisin can feel the geometry of the group as their agitation rises; a knot of rage like the formation of a black hole in the centre of a galaxy, and like the gravity well of a collapsing star, it spreads outward, encompassing all it comes into contact with, each member of the group outraged at the actions one of their number has endured, and the single figure in the centre of then, once the catalyst of a movement and now the trembling symbol of mishandled justice.

Roisin inhales sharply as the mantle flares. Here.

The spark is not a misunderstanding this time, but a choice, made by a willing instigator desperate to light the match that starts a revolution. A young man — early twenties, jaw clenched, eyes bright with unshed tears — steps forward from the crowd. He is shaking, not with fear, but with the unbearable pressure of everything he has carried.

Roisin sees the shape of his grief. A loss and a betrayal, the withdrawal of governmental support for someone who desperately relied on it; a refusal to reassess the case; the subsequent death by suicide of the former recipient. It is a wound that has never healed but unlike the oyster, he has a way to eject that pearl of grief in a manner that will change the system, and he is here to effect that release.

He reaches into his jacket.