Clara Kling is the CEO of the Genesis Foundation in Gary, Indiana. In another layer of the world she is a sleeping vampire guardian of Igweb’s treasure chamber. Lead poisoning and a time paradox are killing her.
| Type | Character |
| Spanish entry | Clara Kling |
Description
She wears a white, mannish, “rather English” suit and pointed shoes; her features are angular and German, her skin “as white as it gets”, like Marlene Dietrich, “impeccable”. She is “from a family and trained in Berlin”.
The Foundation
As CEO, director and supervisor, her invitation (“Clarita’s”) opens the Foundation and its school. She negotiates missions and runs the Alpha Complex, “still being founded”, and wants to recruit the companions for it. She left explosive charges on the portals in case she did not receive the gems.
The sleeper
She also lies in the bounded chamber of Igweb’s treasure, in Iron Mountain, in the interdimensional caverns: gilded plate mail, a long bastard sword from chest to feet, gauntlets crossed on the pommel, pale skin, bright red lips, glossy jet-black hair. In the remote past where magic rules, she was a young Templar.
Her task is “to make sure the prisoners do not leave here”; rescue is banned: “a fate worse than death will surely come to those fools who violate the bounded place”. When the doors have been entered seven times she wakes: “a vapor forms and goes in through this same place”. She is a vampire; her ashes are used in rituals of invocation.
The guardians
Guarding takes two. Her fellow guardian Rachel Betta (“the guardians of this place are, or were”) is also her rival, “fighting over the heart of Gary Indiana”. Another record names the other guardian of the platform Richard Bentham. “There were, and it is right to say were, because it seems they are no more.”
Decline
She is dying, or dead, of lead poisoning, in which the butler Grimm figures in an unstated role. A time paradox also contaminated her: “someone who sought purity”. One Rigel Beta is mentioned regarding the anomaly, but she is the one ill.
Open questions
- How do the executive and the sleeping Templar relate?
- Are Bentham, Rachel Betta and Rigel Beta three people, two, or one?
- Who poisoned her, and are lead and paradox one harm?
- What were the gems? What do the Foundation and the Alpha Complex actually do?
- When was she reduced to ashes, by whom, and who uses them?