Conspiracies

"Wait, wait, wait. You started out a step ahead of me and now you want to take another."

"How? How am I ahead of you?"

"What is this 'dark intelligence'? Is it just there? I mean, is it Satan, Kali, the Bogey Man, what?"

"Perhaps it is all of them, perhaps none of them. Why do you presume it must have a name? It is not some silly god. If anything, the Otherness is more of an anti-god."

"Like Olive's Antichrist?"

Roma sighed, his expression frustrated. "No. That is part of Christian mythology. Forget Olive's eschatological ravings, and every religion you have ever heard of. When I say anti-god, I mean something at the opposite pole from everything you think of when someone says 'god.' This entity does not want worshippers, does not want a religion set up around it. It has no name and does not want anyone assigning it a name."

"What is it then?"

"An incomprehensible entity, a huge, unimaginable chaotic force—it does not need a name. In fact, you might even say it wishes to avoid a name. It does not want us knowing about it."

"If it's, so powerful, why should it care? And who's ever heard of a god that doesn't want believers?"

"Please stop using the word 'god.' You are only confusing yourself."

"Okay. Then why doesn't it want believers?"

"Because of its chaotic nature. Once you believe in it, once you acknowledge it, you give it form. Assigning it a form, a shape, an identity weakens its influence. Identifying it and giving it a name or, worst of all, converting a host of believers to worship it, would shrink its interface with this world and push it further away. So it masks itself as other religions and belief systems and lets them front for it."

"Sort of like a multinational conglomerate hiding behind lots of dummy corporations."

Roma nodded slowly. "A mundane analogy, but you seem to be getting the picture. This force is in this world in many guises, but all working toward the same end: chaos."

"A little chaos isn't so bad."

"You mean, a little randomness? A little unpredictability for excitement?" He laughed softly as he shook his head. "You have no idea, no concept of what we are discussing here."

"All right, what does it want?"

"Everything—including this corner of existence."

"Because why? We taste good?"

"Really, if you refuse to be serious—"

"Don't tell me to be serious when you've filled this hotel with a very serious group of otherwise sane adults who firmly believe that a horde of alien lizards is heading this way from space and is going to chow down on us big time when they get here. I didn't make that up—they did."

"Well, they are right and they are wrong. Something is trying to get here but the 'chowing down,' so to speak, will be of a more spiritual sort. If you would listen without interrupting you might understand."

Jack leaned back and folded his arms. "All right. I'll listen. But whenever I hear stuff like this I can't help thinking about how we all thought earth and humanity were the center of the universe. Then Galileo came along."

"Point taken. It does sound anthropocentric, but if you will hear me out, you will see it is not."

"Go."

"Thank you. I will try to come at this from a different angle: Imagine two vast, unimaginably complex forces at war. Where? All around us. Why? I do not pretend to know. And it has been going on so long, perhaps they themselves have forgotten why. But none of that matters. What does matter is that all existence is the prize. Notice I did not say 'the world,' 'the solar system,' 'the universe,' 'reality'—I said existence. That means that all other dimensions, other universes, other realities—which, trust me on this, do exist—are included as well.

This corner of reality is a minuscule backwater of that whole, but it is a part. And if you mean to call yourself the victor, you must have it all."

Jack resisted quoting Rodney King.

"Now," Roma continued, "one of these forces is decidedly inimical to humanity; the other is not."

Jack couldn't help it—he yawned.

"Am I boring you?" Roma said, his expression shocked.

"Sorry. Just sounds like the old Good versus Evil, God versus dat ol' debil Satan sort of thing."

"That is how some people interpret it, and Cosmic Dualism is rather trite. But that is not the case here. Please note that I did not say that the opposing side—the anti-Otherness, if you wish—is 'good.' I said it is not inimical. Frankly, I doubt very much that it gives a specific damn about humanity other than the fact that this territory lies on its side of the cosmic DMZ, and it wants to keep it there."

Wow, Jack thought. He'd heard some wild theories this week, and he'd become convinced that something—not aliens, not the Antichrist, not the New World Order, but something—was going on, but this ... this Otherness stuff took the blue ribbon for being the farthest out.

"So ... " Jack said. "We're all caught up in a giant game of Risk."

Roma shook his head slowly. "You have an uncanny knack for reducing the empyrean to the mundane."

"So I've been told."

"But then," Roma said, "taking everything I've said into account, we must not overlook the big 'or.'"

"Or?"

"Or ... everything I have just told you is completely wrong because there is no way a human can understand the logic and motives of this totally 'other' reality."

"Swell," Jack said, wanting to scour the smug look off Roma's face. "Then all this talk's got nothing to do with"—Jack mimicked Roma's three-fingered gesture again—"this."

"On the contrary. Your scars were made by a creature of the Otherness."

"The ones you say you watched being conceived."

"Watched? A piece of my flesh was used in their genesis." Roma's expression clouded. "Not that I had much say in the matter. But they turned out to be rather magnificent creatures, didn't they."

"Magnificent isn't quite the word I'd choose."

But perhaps magnificent wasn't so far off. Magnificently evil, and so alien, so ... other, that Jack remembered how his most primitive instincts had screamed for him either to run or to annihilate them.

Jack also remembered what he'd been told about the origin of the rakoshi. He could almost hear Kolabati's voice ...

"Tradition has it that before the Vedic gods, and even before the pre-Vedic gods, there were other gods, the Old Ones, who hated mankind and wanted to usurp our place on earth. To do this they created blasphemous parodies of humans ... stripped of love and decency and everything good we are capable of. They are hate, greed, lust, and violence incarnate ... "

Could Kolabati's Old Ones be Roma's Otherness?

Roma rose from the table. "Well, I'm satisfied," he said.

"About what?"

"That all you know of the Otherness is what I've just told you. I thought you might be a threat, but I am now convinced you are not."

For some reason he couldn't quite grasp, Jack felt offended by that. "Threat of what?"

Roma went on as if he hadn't heard. "But there might be others who are not so sure. You would do well to take care, Mr. Shelby. You might even consider returning to your home and locking your doors for the rest of the weekend."

The warning startled Jack, and before he could reply, Roma turned and strode away. Jack wanted to run after him, grab him, shake him, and shout Tell me what you mean! But he fought the urge. That would only cause a scene, and was unlikely to make Roma more talkative.