I bowed my head. “Yes, sir,” I said. “I could not tell.”
“Nor could I,” he admitted. “I can only make an educated guess, based on the literature.” He picked up the Herodotus from the stack and flipped rapidly through the ancient pages until he came upon a passage and read it quietly to himself in the original Greek. After a moment or two he slapped the book closed, replaced it upon the stack, and returned to the map. He produced a ruler from his pocket, measured the shortest distance between New Jerusalem and the coast, and then proceeded to make calculations in a small notebook, muttering to himself the entire time, while I, so recently the object of his full attention, stood entirely forgotten. His was a concentration more complete and exhausting in its force than that in any other man I have met in my long life. I felt, after the dazzling light of his focus had shifted away, like a person falling into a well, plunging from bright sunlight into utter darkness.
He made several measurements, from the borders of our county to various seaports along the coast, carefully noting each one in his notebook and tracing faint connecting lines along the edge of the ruler. Our town lay but a day’s ride from the coast, and soon the parchment was filled with dozens of intersecting lines that reminded me of the intricate design of a spider’s web. I was not entirely sure, but thought he had to be trying to discover the route taken by the monsters into New Jerusalem.
It struck me, I confess, as exceedingly odd, after our narrow escape, that he would be wasting precious time in an interesting but pointless exercise. What did it matter where these things came from or how they had come to be there? Would not our time have been more valuably spent rounding up all the able-bodied men in town for an impromptu hunt? The Anthropophagi were loose among us-and clearly hungry. I could not chase from my mind’s eye Eliza Bunton’s hair spilling from the snapping jaws of the ravenous Anthropophagi. Why did we tarry there reading old books, studying maps, and taking measurements while a pack of thirty sojourners from a nightmare roamed the countryside? We should have roused the residents to flee the creatures’ onslaught or throw up barricades against the coming siege. The time to unravel the puzzle of their presence in New Jerusalem was after their eradication, not then, when our very survival hung in the balance. Who else, I wondered, might perish this night in the same unspeakable manner as Erasmus Gray, while the doctor draws his lines and reads his Greek and jots in his little book? Who else will be sacrificed upon the altar of science? If such questions occurred to a twelve-year-old boy, surely they occurred to a man of Warthrop’s intellect.
I pondered this riddle, remembering his earlier admonitions upon the dangers of fear. Was that it? Was this man, the greatest monstrumologist of his day, overcome by dread, and were these frivolous (to my mind) pursuits at this desperate hour a means of avoiding the stark truth that circumstances had forced upon him? In short, was he, the great Pellinore Warthrop, afraid?
Telling myself it was not for my own selfish comfort, but for my fellow man, I spoke up at last. For those slumbering innocents unaware of the mortal danger in their midst, for the old man asleep in his bed and the tender babe at peace in her crib, I finally spoke.
“Dr. Warthrop, sir?”
He did not pause in his task. “What is it, Will Henry?”
“Should I fetch the constable now?”
“The constable? To what purpose?”
“To-to help,” I stammered.
“Help whom? With what?”
“Help us, sir. With the… the infestation…”
He waved dismissively in my direction, still absorbed in his measurements. “The Anthropophagi will not feed again this night, Will Henry,” he said. His dark hair fell over his forehead as he leaned over the map, lips pursed in concentration.
I would have dropped the matter had it not been for the folly of his original hypothesis: the predication that there could not have been more than one or two of the man-eaters lurking in the vicinity of New Jerusalem, an error that had cost a man his life, at the time pronounced with the same absolute conviction.
So I pressed him as never before.
“How do you know, sir?” I asked.
“How do I know what?”
“How do you know they won’t attack again?”
“Because I can read.” A bit of annoyance had crept into his tone. He patted the nearest stack of books. “Two thousand years of observation support my conclusion, Will Henry. Read Herodotus; peruse Pliny, the writings of Walter Raleigh. Anthropophagi are gorge eaters, hunting, feasting, and then resting-for days, sometimes weeks-before killing again.”
He looked over at me. “What are you suggesting, Will Henry? It is my fault? The blood of the grave-robber is on my hands? Perhaps it is. Was I mistaken about their numbers? Obviously. But it was an estimate based upon all available data, rooted in logic. Given the same facts again, I would take the same gamble, for I deemed time to be of the essence. His discovery forced me into action quicker than I may have liked, and I am certain with more time for careful reflection I would have confronted the possibility that they may have adapted to their new environment in unforeseen ways, which undoubtedly they have. But you must understand, Will Henry, ‘possibility’ is not ‘probability.’ It is possible the sun will rise in the west on the morrow, but hardly probable. I stand by my decision, though I have been proven wrong in the premise that led to it.”
And now the monstrumologist laid a hand upon my shoulder, and the force behind his eyes softened somewhat. “I regret his passing. If it brings any comfort to you, remember he was an old man who had lived a long life-a life long in suffering and deprivation, I might add. He fully understood; he fully accepted the danger; and I asked nothing of him that I did not demand of myself. I did not force him to accompany us tonight or ask him to accept any greater risk than I myself was willing to take.”
Perhaps he took note of my body quivering beneath his hand, for he followed with this, his gaze becoming flinty again, “And I must say, Will Henry, it is exceedingly curious that you dwell upon the perceived folly and injustice of his end and not upon your own good fortune, the life that would have been forfeit had I not ended his. Do you see? Do you begin to understand why I said he would thank me if he could?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“Then I give you too much credit. I thought you were a clever boy.”
I shrugged his hand from my shoulder and cried, “I don’t understand! Forgive me, Doctor, but I don’t understand at all. We shouldn’t have gone there tonight. We should have waited till daylight to bring her back. If we had waited and fetched the constable, he might still be alive!”
“But those are not the facts,” he replied calmly. “We did not wait. We did not fetch the constable. You still fail to grasp the essentials here, Will Henry. James Henry would have. Your father would have understood-he would not have chided me or judged me. He would have thanked me.”
“Thanked you?”
“As you should thank me now, for saving your life, Will Henry.”
It was more than offensive; it was galling, given what had happened to my father as a result of his unquestioning service to the monstrumologist. He owed his demise, and I the loss of everything I held dear, to this man, and now here this same man stood demanding my gratitude!
“Had I spared him,” he went on, “you would not have been spared. I would have lost you, Will Henry, and, as I told the old man, your services are indispensable to me.”
What more need I say about this odd and solitary figure, this genius who labored all his life in obscurity in the most obscure of sciences, whom the world would little note nor long remember, but to whom the world owed much, this man who possessed, it seemed, not the slightest shred of humility or warmth, who lacked empathy and compassion and the ability to read men’s hearts-or the heart of a twelve-year-old boy whose world had been shattered in an awful instant? To bring up my father in a moment like this! What more may I offer as evidence of my hypothesis that this man’s hubris rose to heights-or sunk to depths-rarely seen outside the confines of Greek theater or the tragedies of Shakespeare? He did not equivocate with me. He did not couch his words in comforting bromides or shopworn clichés. He had saved my life because my life was important to him. He had saved my life for his sake, for the furtherance of his ambition. Thus even his mercy was rooted in his ego.