The One We Feed (24 page)

I blinked
dumbly into the quiet. Could it really be that every event that had transpired
in the last five years had something to do with Devlin?

“Every path I
walked led me here,” Ananda whispered almost to himself. He set the cup down
gently and closed his eyes.

“There is not
an immortal that walks this earth,” Devlin countered soothingly, “nor agency of
man, that does not owe me something. I am Caesar. All roads lead to my door.”

Still
open-mouthed, I collapsed back. To combat
every
possibility, to arrange
all the pieces so that no matter what move your opponents made they were forced
into a direct confrontation, how long would that really take? Five years, I
wondered. No, more like hundreds. Lifetimes.

“You’re a
stalker?” I blurted out. “You planned for hundreds of years just to
meet
Ananda? Why not just walk into the monastery and introduce yourself?”

Devlin ignored
me. He was far too concerned with the object of his affection to care what
stupid things I had to say.

“I won’t let
you hurt him,” I said.

“I would never
hurt him, and now he knows it,” he replied, though it didn’t seem as if he was
speaking to me. “Others perhaps...many others, but not him.”

“How does he
know it? Because you killed his friends and put him squarely in his enemy’s
clutches?”

“And yet he is
still sitting here, free.” Devlin smiled. “He was not to be injured. I was very
careful that our arrangement was clear. I am always very careful.”

“Oh, I suppose
hurting him would be rude?” I snickered. “Etiquette is the extension of
empathy; I mean, what gives? You’re a confessed murderer. What’s the point?”

Devlin sighed,
finally certain that ignoring me would never silence me. It was a horrible
realization to have, I’m sure, but I sort of didn’t care.

He should
learn to be less self-absorbed.

“My dear,” he
said airily, “the purpose of etiquette is to provide the parties of any
interaction with reasonable expectations, so that no one can deny the
‘fairness’ of an exchange.”

I think I
rolled my eyes, but I was trying very hard not to. Maybe for
him
that’s
what manners were, but for me they were something entirely different.

“You’re polite
to people so that they will agree with you when you visit them with
consequences.”

Jinx began to
shiver with laughter. His body relaxed, and, for the first time since we set
foot in the Circle, the Boy Wonder was himself.

“Genius,” he
giggled.

I looked from
him to Ananda. Both were clearly oblivious to the distrust and scorn I was
feeling for the man.

What am I
missing?

“Are you
denying your philosophy then?” I rubbed a hand across my forehead, trying to
smooth the wrinkles I found there.

He raised an
eyebrow. Again, I felt as if I recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t be
sure. His face was haunting me, and Jinx’s clue told me that I should know him.

“I have never
claimed to have any philosophy.”

“But….” I
flapped an arm at the empty dance floor.

He crossed his
legs and folded his hands atop his knee. “All I did was very politely abstain
from judgment. This had the remarkable effect of attracting exactly the type of
persons with exactly the type of habits to be of most use. Such people require
a remarkable level of ambivalence from their peers to survive.”

“Wh...what?”
Beside me, Jinx continued to laugh silently and Ananda to sip quietly. “Are you
saying it’s an
act
?”

“Belief always
begins with an attempt to explain something felt, something
intangible
.
People build arguments, using reason to explain things that defy reasoning.” He
leaned forward smartly and refilled his teacup. “For example: the belief in
God. They experience something profound, which they attribute to a deity. It
would be fine for them to have their unfounded belief if it stayed in their own
skull. Nothing in this world would change. The trouble arises when they then
attempt to explain how their opinion works to someone who has not shared their
experiences. Logic fails them. They resort to ontology, and thus
prove
nothing, but
believe
that they have.”

My open mouth
could only manage a, “Huh?”

Jinx shook his
head, “Ontology. C follows from B, which follows from A.”

“I know what
an ontological argument is!” I spluttered. “That answer had nothing to do with
my question.”

But evidently
it had everything to do with my question, because once again, Devlin paid no
attention to my protest. “Logic is merely the following of breadcrumbs left by
the universe itself, beginning with skepticism. A method, if you will.
Ontology, unlike logic, begins with desire. The believer is attempting to
demonstrate to the outsider that non-empirical faith obeys the same laws and
expectations as the audience’s empirical reality. In fact, they fail to realize
that they have built their faith into their argument. You cannot define a word
by using said word in the definition.”

“What are you
saying?” I asked, not because I didn’t understand, but because I did and was
thoroughly bothered by it.

Ananda finally
stopped sipping and rested his cup atop his saucer with a polite clink as if to
alert everyone he was about to speak.

“This species
of immortal spent centuries trying to balance good and evil, two things that do
not exist.”

Devlin spread
his arms over the back of the sofa. “But what happens to people who believe in
ultimate perfection but perceive that they are in no way close to achieving it?
They must find a place for themselves, and because they believe they cannot
achieve greatness they aspire to the opposite, in order to maintain the
balance, to serve the cause they themselves invented. They devote themselves so
completely to this cause that they achieve an elevated level of control, and
thus, immortality. But whoever said immortality should be the end of it?”

“You make them
sound like idiots,” I said in mild reproach.

“They are.” He
sighed again, this time even more laboriously. “The fact that they live longer
does not absolve them from the same flaws as the rest of humanity. They do,
after all, think with the same lump of grey meat.”

“So then,” I
pushed my hair behind my ears, “what is the end?”

He blinked
pensively at me for a moment. “I thought you knew.”

Jinx’s giggle
blossomed into a full-force laugh. “She was right, then. You
don’t
exist!
You just take the shape of the space they made for you, the fucktards!”

Devlin made a
sound of disapproval for Jinx’s epithet, but it was ineffectual, since he’d
been the one to expose the man behind the curtain. “It wasn’t too difficult.
Put a few deserving people on spikes and you have your ticket in.”

I’m sure
Devlin was tired of seeing my tongue and molars, but I just couldn’t seem to
keep my jaw from falling open. “Deserving?”

“Forgive me,”
he murmured, his gaze rolling back to Ananda’s face. “Of course, I mean to say
that law is a social contract. If a person disobeys, he does so knowing the
consequences. If a leader is to keep
his
side of the social contract,
then he must make certain that all said consequences are meted out. ‘Deserving’
is a convenient word for their failure to comply, and ‘Justice,’ a convenient
word for my obligatory response.”

Horror-stricken,
I shook my head. “You controlled people, used people,
killed
people!”

“A perfect
illustration of the previous point,” he said. “Your belief that life is sacred
is a component of your identity, based upon the suffering you endured at the
loss of your loved ones. It has organically grown over the whole of your
lifetime, but you have somehow constructed an ontological proof that I am meant
to accept. Well,” he raised two fingers to his temple and saluted me almost
playfully, “I regret to inform you that I reject your argument and am, by your
own admission, within my rights to do so.”

Ananda was
looking at Devlin with an unfocused glance that worried me. We were all being
entirely too trusting.

“Then you
don’t believe that life is sacred?” I pressed.

“No,” Devlin
said, though he was watching Ananda’s every tiny tick for signs of offense. “I
know that it is a serendipitous coincidence. One I am most interested to see
continue, as I and all my opinions are an integral part of it. If that is what
you call ‘sacred’ then perhaps we can agree. I do, however, think the race
could stand a bit of pruning in order to stay healthy.”

Uncertain what
to make of the entire conversation, I got up and walked to the rail. Devlin was
an Antique. He’d been alive a long time and had been traveling the world,
learning things about humanity. My immediate reaction to him was to stamp my
foot and tell him he was absolutely wrong, but what if he wasn’t? What if I
just couldn’t see the equality of both positions because I maintained one of
them? It was impossible for me to be objective, if I was still fighting to save
a little girl.

It seemed that
to Devlin, the entire world was just one pattern after another, easily
predicted, and thus, uninspired.

“So,” I said
quietly, knotting my fingers up over and over again, “killing someone to get
something you want is fine by you?”

I heard Jinx
cough.

“That is the
height of rudeness,” Devlin replied. “I take offense that you believe me
capable of it. However, allowing a person to remain true to themselves by
adhering to the rules
they
created is extremely polite.”

“And the monks
at the monastery? You helped someone kill them. Was that polite?”

Ananda’s cup
and saucer clinked against one another.

“They were
fighting a non-existent war, protecting a prophet that I imagine never asked to
be one. They spent their lives meditating on the illusion that is life, and
somehow I am meant to feel guilty for helping them past it? They made their own
rules, and, had I not obeyed them, the Sangha would have hired a more dangerous
group, I assure you. The one I suggested was very precise, which is why Ananda
is alive today and no innocents were injured.”

“How do you
know that?”

Out of
nowhere, Devlin laughed. “My dear, men filled with hate are regrettably very
predictable. It’s unfortunate that such emotions disable any higher brain
functions, but so it is. I’m afraid the Sangha are the least likely things on
the planet to surprise me.”

Finally, I
understood his game. My resentment and disgust hissed out in a long exhale. I
turned around and pursed my lips. Jinx had found another Redbull and was laying
at full length on his loveseat. Ananda was still placid as ever, sitting tall,
saucer in one hand and cup in the other. Devlin’s eyes were half-lidded in the
happiness of a strategy well-executed.

“Don’t the
rules apply to you?”

He blinked
sleepily. “The player can get up and leave at any time. Unfortunately, the
pieces are always on the board, unable to see the inevitable patterns their
paths will travel. I apologize if this offends your impassioned belief that we
are all snowflakes. I certainly do not mean to offend, but I refuse to
compromise my own beliefs in favor of yours. A polite person would not make
me.”

And Ananda was
always polite.

I shook my
head, lacking any other form of response. It now made sense in a twisted kind
of way, but then again, it was only twisted because I did not agree with him.
Was that why Devlin had fixated on Ananda? Could it really be that all along
Devlin had been waiting for someone who would not pass judgment but be
blissfully happy to be his consort?

“Why play at
all?”

“Introduce
myself before Ananda would speak, before I could be of use to him, before the
moment he realized I was the only hope he had to succeed in his dharma? You
know him. What is the most important thing in his universe?”

Devlin wasn’t
evil at all, not in the slightest. He didn’t maneuver himself into a position
of power so that he could harm me or Ananda. He was trying to help by being
integral in every plot we faced, even to some extent, controlling the ones who
believed they were in control, but why, I couldn’t guess.

Arthur
must
have known about Devlin’s involvement! He must have gone where he knew Devlin
would strike in order to play off the arrangements that had been made, because
surely it could not happen the other way around. There was no way Devlin could
account for Arthur, since Arthur was only visible to those who required his
assistance.

But then, how
had Devlin come to learn of Ananda? Someone must have told him, and if he could
be told about something like that, perhaps he
did
know about Arthur.
Perhaps they were playing off each other, guessing in advance, what the other
would do.

You’re getting
ahead of yourself. There’s no proof either of them are that brilliant.