Part 21 (1/2)
Then it is yours.
”Always?”
For the rest of your life.
McNeely shuddered when it said that, even though there was no trace of malice in the tone. Almost immediately he felt something change within him. It was not a great change; no epiphany that showed him whirling clouds and suns that blazoned ”heteros.e.xual” across the sky in letters of fire. Rather, it was a subtle reorganization, a s.h.i.+fting of things inside him, lasting only a second. But afterward he knew he could love Gabrielle the way he had loved her before. A thrill went through him as he thought of her body opened beneath him.
She is beautiful.
McNeely drew up with a start as he realized that it had seen precisely what he had. ”You read my mind?” he asked in a tense voice.
We see thoughts.
”Always?”
When we wish.
The face began to form then, the same gentle, peaceful, G.o.dlike face that he had seen in the kitchen. It was smiling benignly. ”I can see you now,” McNeely said.
We did not wish to frighten you again, it said by way of explanation.
”I'm not frightened,” he said, thinking as he did so that it already knew that. ”Thank you. Thank you for doing ... whatever you did.”
You are welcome.
”Is there-” He paused, thinking that he could not ask it after all. It seemed too Mephistophelean.
You wish to know if there is anything you can do for us in return.
He swallowed, then nodded.
Perhaps there is something. In the future.
Jesus, he thought. Why did it suddenly sound like Marion Brando in The G.o.dfather? And with a strange glee he realized that even if it was reading his mind, it could not grasp the allusion. Perhaps that was the way to keep thoughts private-think in symbols: contemporary archetypes.
”Who are you?” he asked.
Friends.
”Are you ghosts?”
It did not answer. We can do much for you.
”But what are you?”
We can give you power.
”You gave Seth c.u.mmings power,” he said, surprised at his own boldness.
The thing was silent for a while, its face expressionless. We erred with Seth c.u.mmings.
He laughed shortly. ”Erred? d.a.m.n right, you erred!” He slapped his mouth shut then as the thought hit him that he should not antagonize this thing, that whatever it was, it had proven itself powerful beyond his comprehension.
Seth c.u.mmings was weak. He had no strength of will. No image of himself as anything great. He thought only in terms of what we could do for him. He could not hope to cope with the power we gave him. He abused it for his own petty urges.
”And what about me? When I killed c.u.mmings with that kick? Did you give me the power to do that?”
We did. Else he would have killed you all.
”He did kill Neville.”
He was inessential.
A chill went through McNeely. It was as if he had been waiting for it to say something like that, to expose, if not its evil, its G.o.dlike insensitivity to human affairs. ”Inessential to whom?” he asked, sounding braver than he felt.
To anyone. Surely he was inessential to his wife. She desired you. And if a man is inessential to those closest to him, does it not follow that he will be inessential to others as well?
”I asked you before. Who are you?”
Why do you wish to know?
”To . . . to call you by name, maybe. Do you have a name?”
We have many names. Millions of names.
(We. Millions of names. What the h.e.l.l was this?) ”Are there millions of you, then?” he asked.
The face moved up and down. Nodding. Yes. All in one.
”You mean you're composed of many. . . intelligences?”
Oh yes. There was pride in the tone. Many.
He made a connection, hazarded a guess. ”The lights in the sky . . . the lights at night . . . are they from you?”
They are to us. New ones. New ones coming all the time.
”Then Gabrielle was right. This place is a lodestone. Drawing what? Souls?”
Souls. What are souls? Some things survive, others do not. What needs to survive survives. What is content to sleep sleeps.
”But you're not content to sleep?”
No.
”Why not?”