“He created it, Aaron!”
“No, I can’t accept that. I can’t.”
“You’re still talking religion, Aaron. You’re talking an obdurate morality. There is no secure logical ground for condemning him.”
“But there is. There has to be. Pestilence is natural, but you wouldn’t let the bacillus out of the tube to destroy millions. Rowan, for the love of God, our consciousness was educated by the flesh from which it evolved. What would we be without the capacity to feel physical pain? And this creature, Lasher, has never bled from the smallest wound. He’s never been chastened by hunger or sharpened by the need to survive. He is an immoral intelligence, Rowan, and you know this. You know it. And that is what I call unnatural, for want of a better word.”
“Pretty moral poetry,” she said. “You disappoint me. I was hoping you would give me arguments in exchange for my warning. I was hoping you would fortify my soul.”
“You don’t need my arguments. Look into your own soul. You know what I’m trying to tell you. He’s a laser beam with ambition. He’s a bomb that can think for itself. Let him in and the world will pay for it. You will be the mother of a disaster.”
“Disaster,” she whispered. “What a lovely word.”
How frail he looked. She was seeing his age for the first time in the heavy lines of his face, in the soft pockets of flesh around his pale, imploring eyes. He seemed so weak to her suddenly, so without his usual eloquence and grace. Just an old man with white hair, peering at her, full of childlike wonder. No lure at all.
“You know what it could really mean, don’t you?” she asked wearily. “When you strip away the fear?”
“He’s lying to you; he’s taking over your conscience.”
“Don’t say that to me!” she hissed. “That isn’t courage on your part, it’s stupidity.” She settled back trying to calm herself. There had been a time when she loved this man. Even now she didn’t want him harmed. “Can’t you see the inevitable end of it?” she asked, reasonably. “If the mutation is successful, he can propagate. If the cells can be grafted and replicate themselves in other human bodies, the entire future of the human race can be changed. We are talking about an end to death.”
“The age-old lure,” Aaron said bitterly. “The age-old lie.”
She smiled to see his composure stripped away.
“Your sanctimoniousness tires me,” she said. “Science has always been the key. Witches were nothing but scientists, always. Black magic was striving to be science. Mary Shelley saw the future. Poets always see the future. And the kids in the third row of the theater know it when they watch Dr. Frankenstein piece the monster together, and raise the body into the electrical storm.”
“It is a horror story, Rowan. He’s mutated your conscience.”
“Don’t insult me like that again,” she said, leaning once more across the table. “You’re old, you don’t have many years left. I love you for what you’ve given me, and I don’t want to hurt you. But don’t tempt me and don’t tempt him. What I’m telling you is the truth.”
He didn’t answer her. He had dropped into a baffling state of calm. She found his small hazel eyes suddenly quite unreadable, and she marveled at his strength. It made her smile.
“Don’t you believe what I’m telling you? Don’t you want to write it in the file? I saw it in Lemle’s laboratory when I saw that fetus connected to all those little tubes. You never knew why I killed Lemle, did you? You knew I did it, but you didn’t know the cause. Lemle was in control of a project at the Institute. He was harvesting cells from live fetuses and using them in transplants. It’s going on in other places. You can see the possibilities, but imagine experiments involving Lasher’s cells, cells that have endured and transported consciousness for billions of years.”
“I want you to call Michael, to ask Michael to come home.”
“Michael can’t stop him. Only I can stop him. Let Michael be where he’s out of danger. Do you want Michael to die too?”
“Listen to me. You can close your mind to this being. You can veil your thoughts from it by a simple act of will. There are techniques as old as the oldest religions on earth for protecting ourselves from demons. It reads in your mind only what you project towards it. It’s not different from telepathy. Try and you’ll see.”
“And why should I do that?”
“To give yourself time. To give yourself a safe place for a moral decision.”
“No, you don’t understand how powerful he is. You never did. And you don’t know how well he knows me. That’s the key, what he knows of me.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to do what he wants,” she said. “I really don’t. But it’s irresistible, don’t you see?”
“What about Michael? What about your dreams of Mayfair Medical?”
“Ellie was right,” she said. She sat back against the wall and gazed off again, the lights of the bar blurring slightly. “Ellie knew. She had Cortland’s blood in her and she could see the future. Maybe it was only dim shapes and feelings, but she knew. I should never have come back. He used Michael to see to it that I came back. I knew Michael was in New Orleans, and like a randy bitch, I came back for that reason!”
“You’re not talking the truth. I want you to come upstairs and stay with me.”
“You’re such a fool. I could kill you here and now and no one would ever know it. No one but your brotherhood and your friend Michael Curry. And what could they do? It’s over, Aaron. I may fight, and I may dance back a few steps, and I may gain an occasional advantage. But it’s over. Michael was meant to bring me back and keep me here and he did.”
She started to rise, but he caught her hand. She looked down at his fingers. So old. You can always tell age by a person’s hands. Were people staring at them? Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered in this little room. She started to pull away.
“What about your child, Rowan?”
“Michael told you?”
“He didn’t have to tell me. Michael was sent to love you so that you would drive that thing away, once and forever. So that you wouldn’t fight this battle alone.”
“You knew that without being told also?”
“Yes. And so do you.”
She pulled her hand free.
“Go away, Aaron. Go far away. Go hide in the Motherhouse in Amsterdam or London. Hide. You’re going to die if you don’t. And if you call Michael, if you call him back here, I swear, I’ll kill you myself.”
Forty-four
ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING HAD gone wrong. The roof at Liberty Street had been leaking when he arrived and somebody had broken into the Castro Street store for a pitiful handful of cash in the drawer. His Diamond Street property had also been vandalized, and it had taken four days to clean it out before he could put it up for sale. Add to that a week to crate Aunt Viv’s antiques, and to pack all her little knickknacks so that nothing would be broken. And he was afraid to trust the movers with these things. Then he’d had to sit down with his accountant for three days to put his tax records in order. December 14 already and there was still so much work to be done.
About the only good thing was that Aunt Viv had received the first two boxes safely and called to say how delighted she was to have her cherished objects with her at last. Did Michael know she’d joined a sewing circle with Lily, in which they did petit point and listened to Bach? She thought it was the most elegant thing. And now that her furniture was on the way, she could invite all the lovely Mayfair ladies over to her place at last. Michael was a darling. Just a darling.
“And I saw Rowan on Sunday, Michael, she was taking a walk, in this freezing weather, but do you know she has finally started to put on a little weight. I never wanted to say it before, but she was so thin and so pale. It was wonderful to see her with a real bloom in her cheeks.”