His voice had dropped, yet I hung upon his every word. ‘For I became a houngan priest, in touch with the Invisibles. But that was only a first step, a shallow one. The true depths are dark, and to darkness I turned, to the most wicked and corrupt among that servile race. I learned from them the arts of malice and compulsion, of sorcery and necromancy; I became a bocor, an adept of the dark. And within a short time, my inborn mastery asserting itself, I became the greatest among those who had taught me, and cast them down to tremble and suffer with the rest of their kind.’
A sudden image swirled before me, like paint in water. Myself, in the white robes of the men around us, plastered with painted markings … ‘And that’s what you mean for me?’ I couldn’t stifle another manic attack of giggles. ‘You want to make me into a bloody witch-doctor?’
He seemed more amused than offended. ‘Oh, no indeed, señor! You misjudge me. That dreary and wasteful time I would spare you. So many false turnings, so many foolish seekings after fulfilment – so many terrible regrets! I did not then realize they were but one step on a quest longer than I could have dreamt – save perhaps in my fevers. Such squalor, such mere savagery – these were mere beginnings I have long surpassed.’ He gazed down at me with a look of delight and wonder, almost childish, the way a single-minded scientist might contemplate his rarest and most precious specimen. ‘As you will, señor, in your turn.’
I stared. That was about all I could do. ‘I don’t understand,’ I stammered. ‘What’re you talking about? What are you offering me?’
He laughed. ‘Things you cannot yet imagine! Power beyond your dreams! But for now, only to begin with – power as you would understand it, dominion in your world. Men will follow you, men, aye, and women – a few at first, then a party – a city – a region – a nation! You will deal with them at your whim, the more so, the more they will flock to you! And you will draw sustenance from them as I did, and live on as they die, untouched by years! What do I offer you? That, señor! That but for a beginning!’
I stared. The tirade had left me literally speechless, my thoughts whirling like a sputtering firework. I’d seen the soul of a man laid bare – or more than a man, or less. And why? Because this Don Pedro thought I was another of his kind. That I’d hardly be anything less than eager to leap at what he offered, if only I could be made to understand. Not a scientist, or a child; a lonely monster, maybe hoping he’d found a friend?
And how wrong was he? He’d gone looking for – call it love; human warmth, at least. Denied it, he’d channelled his frustration into ambition, sadism, god knows what. But me – I’d had love, hadn’t I? And I’d thrown it away. I’d taken that same ambition and stuck it up on an altar, deliberately sacrificed love to it. If anything, that sounded worse. God above, maybe he was right! Maybe I would like what he offered. Maybe he was what I’d come to, anyway, in the end.
There was the image again. Myself as – what was the name? A bocor, mumbo-jumboing over the embers of a dying fire, drawing vevers with my fingers …
No! It was too damn ridiculous. I was about to burst out laughing again when I felt the gritty maize flour turn to computer keys beneath my fingertips. That brought back, sharp as a tang of spices, the familiar thrill of calling up information, juggling it, manipulating it. The way I felt getting to grips with a really difficult deal, tying up a knotty contract in a watertight package of agreements, provisos, penalties …
Only here, somehow, I knew I was dealing a whole order of magnitude higher. The flows of world trade, the checks and balances of high commerce, the economies of nations – all the forces that dictate the life of every man, from the Amazon Indian in his grass hut to the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet. And they would become one man’s to command. They would obey these flowing fingers, the face reflected in the borders of the screen. A handsome face in its way, hard but magnetic, strongly lined, white-haired but crackling with youthful vigour – and still unarguably mine.
I fought to blink away the vision. There was a fierce directness to it that shot right past consciousness and common sense, as wholesale a grab at my instincts as a Pirelli calendar – or a religious experience. My words slurred over my tongue. ‘Why …’
‘Why?’ Again that possessive, gloating smile. ‘Because, señor, I have need of you! Because to gain my end I had to sacrifice all that I had amassed. In my quest I was forced to leave the Inner World behind me, to slough off all that was worldly about me. So now I must have an agent within it – clever instrument of my designs, trusted sharer in their rich rewards! And in you I find the fabric, the fallow soil fit for the plough, the fine clay for the turning – and the firing!’ He wrung his hands in sheer pleasure. ‘And soon, swiftly! Without the long years I cast away on gratifying childish fancies – on trifling, tentative essays of my will. All that I have, I shall share with you! All that I am, I shall make you! And all you can reach out and grasp shall be yours!’
I was spellbound; I couldn’t protest, I didn’t want to. Through my hands, through my commanding mind the world’s commerce poured like a shining river, to be diverted this way and that, settling its gold-dust sediments wheresoever I chose. But still something didn’t quite belong there, some factor that kept bobbing up in the torrents of my mind and wouldn’t sink …
The others!’ I choked. ‘Okay, I’m here! What d’you need them for, now? Clare – you don’t have any use for her any more! Let her go! Let them all go!’
I don’t know what reaction I expected. Anything, perhaps, except the ghastly flicker of fury that crossed the sallow face, clear as lightning in a sulphurous sky. The nostrils pinched tight, the dark eyes narrowed to slits, the livid lips crumpled; blood rose beneath the high cheekbones, then drained as swiftly from the papery skin. It fell inward as if sucked, flat against the bone, leathery and wrinkled; the teeth bared in a horrible grin, the muscles shrank, the tendons stood out like rope. Only the eyes remained full beneath their parchment lids, but their lustre dulled like drying ink.
Sweep a torch around a dry crypt or catacomb and a face like that might leap out at you; or as I’d done, in one of those Neapolitan mausoleums with glass-panelled coffins, I’d seen hands, too, with nails that had gone on growing, yellowed and ridged and curling; and though his never touched me, I felt the bite of them as my face was slapped sharply, from side to side. Still fuming, he bowed again, very stiffly.
‘Desolated as I am to contradict the señor, not for anything in the world would I have these your friends miss the occasion! Indeed, their absence would severely hinder the whole proceedings!’
Stryge let out a horrible sneering caw of laughter, and his breath rolled over me like sewer gas. ‘Call yourself one who binds Immortals, do you? And you can’t even spell this empty thing’s mind off his friends! You – bah! I’ve met the like of you before – spiders in your ceiling! What man dares hold Their kind in thrall?’
Don Pedro bowed deeply once again, and when he rose the face was clear and composed as before. ‘I defer to a colleague of rare distinction; a pity he must share the fate of his inferiors. True, no man could humble Them so. But I have long since ceased to be only a man.’
Stryge gargled and spat. ‘That error’s common enough – the cure swift and final! What are you but a petty Caligula who’s learned a bit of hedge-wizardry? Enjoy your delusions while you may, man; they only mock you, biding Their time to strip them from you! Yes, and all else besides!’