It was no use. God did not intervene in his creation anymore-if he ever did. His eyes and ears were elsewhere, attending the birth or death of a galaxy perhaps, but not to be bothered with the passing of an insignificant goonda boy.
Spence sat up, drying his eyes. He looked sadly at the small body, pale and still in the lamplight. He groaned. "I could have believed in you, God. I almost did." He shook his head; a stirring of regret, as much for his own broken faith-so tentative and unformed-as for the death of the child, passed through him.
"I almost believed." He placed a hand on the boy's forehead and felt the warmth of the fever diminish as the body cooled.
It made no sense, this stupid waste. The sights of the last days flooded back on him. He saw a horde of stump-legged, hunchbacked beggars and starving children pressing gaunt faces toward him. He saw whitened corpses bobbing in the rancid river like so many thousand buoys. He saw the teeming darkness spreading over the city and knew this to be mankind's ancient enemy seeking to destroy the hapless victims cowering beneath its shadow.
"God! Why?" Spence pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Why, why, why?"
The challenge went unanswered.
Spence looked at the young corpse lying so still and light upon the bed. It almost seemed that the slightest breeze would blow the small shell away like a leaf in the wind.
As if in answer to the mental image Spence felt a slight movement in the air and heard the rustle of the wind iii the leaves outside the tent. He raised his head and listened to the night sounds. In the jungle all had become deathly still. Spence fancied he heard footsteps outside the tent, and then heard the bark of a camp dog.
The breeze stirred again, becoming stronger. He felt its coolness on his damp skin. The walls of the tent rippled under it; the lamp flickered and brightened.
And then everything became quiet. The wind stopped. The tent fell into flat folds again. The lamp flame still and dimmed.
The world seemed for a moment to hang balanced on the edge of a thin knife blade. One breath would send it toppling off on one side or the other. Spence held his breath to keep it balanced. He stared down at the dead boy.
In that moment eternities were born, time evaporated. Spence felt its barriers dissolve and flow away. He saw everything in crystalline clarity, hard-edged and in microscopic detail.
The dead boy's pale, almost translucent skin, the tiny black sweep of his eyelashes, the fine rounded curve of his nostrils, the delicate line of his thin, bloodless lips, the silken shaft of each black hair brushing his temples-all this and more Spence saw in a marvel of dumbstruck awe. Each object in his gaze had taken on a fierce, almost painful beauty. He was overwhelmed. He wanted to look away, to close his eyes to keep the sight from burning out his eyes, but dared not. He was held by a power stronger than his own and knew he could not escape it.
Then, as his eyes took in the terrible wonder of the dead boy's body, he saw a tiny flutter just inside the tender hollow of the throat. He heard a sound which seemed to thunder inside his brain, though it must have been barely audible. It was the long, shuddering whisper of breath being drawn into the nostrils and filling the lungs. It was the sound of life reentering the young boy's body.
The breath stopped-Spence wanted to gasp for air himself-and then it was released. The small chest sank. It seemed like an age before the chest rose again.
Slowly the breathing continued, becoming steadier, stronger, and more regular. Spence's mind reeled as he saw color seeping back into the boy's cheeks and the pulse in the throat beating rhythmically.
He knew then that the boy would live and not die. The miracle was complete.
Spence threw himself on the frail body and hugged it to him. He placed a hand on the boy's forehead and felt the warmth of life returning. But the fever was gone.
When Spence raised himself up, dashing tears from his eyes once again, two dark eyes were watching him with curiosity. They blinked at him and then a little hand reached out for his. Spence grabbed it and held it tightly.
He was sitting there, looking into those bemused young eyes, clutching the small hand, when a commotion arose outside the tent. He heard voices, shouts, half-angry cries, and then suddenly the tent was filled with people.
Foremost among them was the goonda chief. Spence glanced around as the crowd tumbled in with a rush. By the expression on Chief Watti's face Spence knew the moment should have been his last-the man held a long dagger in his hand ready to strike. The mother of the boy crouched at his elbow biting the back of her hand. The others hung back-mostly women, already raising a lamentation for the dead boy, and other goondas with their rifles at the ready.
But the bandit leader took one look at his son, lying there With a feeble smile on his lips, holding the hand of his physician, and let out a whoop of jubilation. The dagger spun from his hand. His wife leaped to her son and cradled his thin figure to herself.
Spence stood slowly and looked around. Adjani and Gita, staring and blinking at the confusion around them, rose up and came to stand beside Spence.
"What happened?" said Gita, eyeing the rifle-toting goondas warily. These stared back at the prisoners and shook their heads incredulously.
"You wouldn't believe me," said Spence. "I scarcely believe it myself."
"Did we miss something?" asked Adjani.
Spence turned to regard the boy, now completely enveloped in the embrace of his father.
"No; nothing much."
13
… ARI SAT ON THE small balcony of her room in the tower. The sunlight bathed her upturned face with its warm light and touched her golden hair, transforming it into spun sunbeams. She looked an angel wearing a mortal cloak, but dreaming of its celestial home.
Her thoughts were far from angelic. She had, in the days since Hocking first enlisted her aid, begun to fall into reverie and melancholy. Her father watched her withdraw into herself by degrees until she hardly spoke at all and sat daydreaming for hours at a time on the balcony.
When he ventured to move her from these fits of solitary introspection she would smile wistfully and say, "Oh, don't worry about me, Daddy. I was just thinking…" Though what she was thinking about she would never say. The elder Zanderson had begun to believe that she herself did not know.
He also believed, and rightly so, that it had to do with the visits Hocking paid her, and their trips to who knew where, to do who knew what. She did not speak to him of what went on, and increasingly she resented his continued asking about those secret sessions.
So, he had become a silent worrier. He held his tongue, though it crushed him to see his daughter's spirit withering before his eyes. To fend off the growing sense of dread and doom he felt encircling them he had begun a course of conversation designed to keep her mind occupied and centered on the present.
But even his ebullient monologue failed to prevent the girl's odd moodiness. She would get up in the middle of a sentence and go out on the balcony to sit and stare out into the courtyard or, as she sat now, with her face toward the sun in an attitude of reverence.
His worst fears of a lifetime were taking flesh before his eyes: his daughter seemed to be slipping into the same strange malady that had claimed her mother. And that was almost too much to bear.
"Ari," he said gently, coming to stand beside her on the balcony. "What are you thinking about, dear?"
"Oh, hi, Daddy. I didn't hear you come out."
"I asked what you are thinking about." "Oh, nothing really. I don't know."
"It must be something. You've been out here a long time." A sad smile played on her lips. "Have I? I'm sorry. I left you sitting alone again, didn't I? Oh, well… "