Inspired by the James Baldwin portrait
“Keep up, Williams,” Ermine said. “Our window is small, and the stakes are high.”
He looked odd—we both did—in the fashions of 1930s New York. High-waisted, tapered pants with silly cuffs at the ankles, suit jackets complete with vests and ties.
“I don’t see what our respectable clothes accomplish if we make a scene speed-walking everywhere,” I said.
Ermine whirled on me, finger wagging right under my nose. “You see anyone around anymore? We’re out of the visibility zone, so watch your tone with me.” Sticky sweat rolled down the bridge of his nose. “You might have the others fooled, but I know what you are.”
The surprise must’ve shone on my face for how that self-satisfied smirk infected one muscle then the next all the way up Ermine’s left cheek.
“Yeah, I know what I see when I see it. You can be as smart and handsome and capable as you want. You might even sunburn, but we’ll always see through it eventually.” Ermine straightened his vest and coat then blotted his forehead with his pocket square, returning it rumpled. “You’re a smart man, and the taint in you is small. Keep being useful, and nobody will say anything. But don’t talk to me like that ever again. Understand?”
I’d underestimated Ermine’s intelligence, but not by much. I wouldn’t do it again—couldn’t—so I nodded.
Ermine glanced at his watch then down the alley. “Ah, there’s our boy,” he said. “Hey, you there!” He pulled a little hanky out of his inside pocket as he started through the alley. “I’m looking for a tailor.” He was nearly to Baldwin. “I’ve got a name but no address. I’ll give you a nickel if you point me right.”
Little James’s eyes were on the nickel when Ermine pressed the hanky to his face. He struggled for a handful of seconds, but Ermine quickly returned with the unconscious Baldwin.
“Through there,” he said, nodding to an alley door.
I yanked it open. The slam of the door echoed after us, but only a few pigeons noticed. Nobody in on a Sunday.
“Clear that table,” Ermine said. “We need him flat and stable.”
I brushed some things to the floor, not caring about the noise. The temporal recon team had been thorough. We were truly alone in this massive city, if only for a few moments.
“Hold his collar down,” Ermine said.
I did, and he pulled out his scanner—a real-time, AI-enhanced, MRI that didn’t need dye to provide contrast. Looking through that lens was like peeking beneath the little Baldwin boy’s skin. Blood pumped, muscles contracted, and nerves fired like wet circuits.
“There it is,” Ermine said. “There’s the nerve we need. A little neurotoxin and, boom, full Moebius Syndrome in a couple years. Hold the scanner.”
I did, and he took a little glasses case out of his other inside pocket. In it was a disassembled syringe gun, and he began clicking it together.
“I still don’t understand,” I said. “Why not just kill him?”
Ermine chuckled. “Oh, we’ve tried. We tried with X and King too. Time rejects such heavy-handed alterations—sometimes violently. We lost some good men in the early days figuring all this out after we got our first black-market temporal resonators. Brave men.”
Ermine took out a liquid capsule, flipped it end to end, making sure to line it up right in the gun. Then he clicked it into the chamber and clapped the setup closed like an old-fashioned pistol.
“I still don’t understand,” I said. “This boy grows up a man of letters. He uses his words, not his face. What do we care about his smile?”
Ermine glanced at his watch then relaxed his finger on the syringe gun.
“Because we’ve done the damned research,” Ermine said. “That’s why. This smile is our undoing. This face. Every laugh and smirk and frown and grimace—every wrinkle carved by either joy, fear, or sadness—is weight. It’s mass. It’s gravity. When this boy becomes a man and that man smiles, the fools will see a brilliant mind that has witnessed what it considers unspeakable sadness and suffering and inequity—what it considers wrong. If he smiles, they’ll see his defiance of it all. They’ll see his perseverance in the face of it. X’s smile is handsome and righteous and angry. King’s is handsome and righteous and patient, but people only follow handsome and righteous so far. It burns them out, see? It needs tempering. Only this one carries that contemplative sadness in one crease and the conquest of that despair in the next. If we sap that strength from this pillar, we believe it will crumble. If this pillar crumbles, we believe the movement will fail. We believe we can right the ship.” He held the syringe gun beside his face, flicked the chamber, and looked longingly at it. “And all with this.”
I nodded and said, “I see.”
Before Ermine could blink, I had one hand behind his head and the other behind the syringe, pushing it into his eye. He gasped when it went in and slammed his head against the table on his way to the ground.
“Butterfly hypothesis confirmed,” I said into my recorder. “Ramp up intel. See if other cells or groups have discovered thresholding.”
I turned off the recorder and pulled my sidearm.
“Stupid,” I said as Ermine lay as still as he could, trying to keep the tremble from that needle in his eye. “Elegant, but stupid.” I crouched down over that grimacing bigot, smiling as big as I could. “Now, I’m not saying what you said about Mr. Baldwin’s smile is wrong. Shit, Ermee, it was damn near poetic. You morons just still don’t understand why you lost. Why you’ll always lose.” I leaned in real close, like I was telling him a secret. “You’re just fucking awful people spewing hateful bullshit,” I winked. “And everyone else, well, we’ll always see through it eventually.”
