The One We Feed (29 page)

“I haven’t
finished my Powerpoint yet.”

“Very funny.”

He turned back
to the computer monitor. “Relax, Lily. I know you want to be in The Loop, I was
doing independent analysis. Checking the data, you know.”

I breathed a
sigh of relief. “And?”

“And it’s the
same as the other tests. Their DNA is different.”

I put my hands
down on his narrow shoulders and squeezed. “How’s it
happening?”

He couldn’t
shrug with me pressing down on him, so he leaned back and stared up my nose. “Dunno.
Need more assays. A sample of your DNA. At any rate, it seems as if it’s
through fluid transmission.”

“Duh, figured
that much out. Is it like a germ or a virus?”

“Possibly.”

“How would
either of those things take away their gifts? And why am I ending up with them?”

He scratched
his head and chewed on his lip piercing. “Um...got some ideas on that, all
kinda wackadoodle, but for now, can’t say exactly how it’s occurring. There are
some interesting facts that indicate a possible answer for the first question.”

“I’m all ears,”
I said, tugging on his decorated lobes.

“Well, we only
have a couple cases to go on, because unfortunately not everyone you’ve
affected has a baseline brain scan to compare to.”

“Huh?”

Devlin
coughed. I turned around to find him watching me with the black queen nestled
in his fingers. “Karl made brain scans mandatory for all of his...colleagues. He
cataloged people with abilities, forming a database. It was one of the things
your sweet little mathematician stole when he wiped the Vihara’s hard drives.”

I looked back
at Jinx. He nodded. “So we have Karl’s baseline scan and the scans of Petula,
William, and Hal. Comparing first to second, what we see in all but William’s
case is that the structures most active when the subjects are using their
talents are no longer active. Whatever you’ve done, it’s broken down the
neuronal connections that they had formed over the span of their lives. You
reset them and presumably altered their DNA to prevent it from happening again.”

“But we don’t
know how?”

“Nope.”

“What does it
matter?” Devlin sang in a tone of voice that dripped with exhaustion. “The only
question
worth
asking is whether or not it can be used to instill gifts,
instead of remove them.”

I must have
looked what I was feeling, because Jinx rolled away from me as if I was about
to projectile vomit like one of those spitting dinosaurs. I shot a glare at our
host to find him smirking.

“And what
would I do with it if it could?” I asked through gritted teeth.

He laughed and
closed his hand around the queen. “I should think that would be obvious.”

Chapter
22

At Every Turn

“You don’t agree?” he asked
with an almost sinister sneer. “Unfortunately, it is not debatable. The
destructive human condition demands a certain type of strategy. Optimism is
noble, but sadly, unwarranted. History has proven that no other course of
action will do. Ask your friend here”—he pointed his angular chin in Arthur’s
direction. “As compassionate as he is, even he understands.”

The long
fingers were poised in air, a smooth marble pawn caught in them. Still, his
eyes flicked to mine and my stomach turned over. For the first time the blue I
found there was chill, so detached that he looked like a wolf glaring at an
intruder, and the intruder was me.

I swallowed.

“Art….” Jinx’s
voice was hoarse. “Answer us for once.”

I asked the
same with my gaze, but his said nothing. The moment stretched. Ananda smiled
unabashedly and airily at the board. Jinx frowned silently beside me. Finally I
could bear it no longer; I reached some kind of mental limit that felt as
sturdy as a wall.

In my
thoughts, I repeated phrases over and over and began to feel a heightened,
almost nervous apprehension that all my random memories were things of
importance. But these were not the kind of self-fulfilling prophecies I wanted.
I got to my feet, disturbed and utterly confused, and walked back out into the
hall, followed shadows to the cavern, traced its rippling walls to the
reception area, my soul gasping for air.

I could see
the precipice, one from which Devlin had already leaped wholeheartedly. It was
such an easy thing to do, and I could already feel it happening. The game was
growing, the board expanding to encompass more than just me, or my sister, or
Reesa. We had begun to speak of the whole world in clipped phrases and little nuances,
tiny approaches to such an enormous responsibility. How tempting it was to go
from considering each human life as a unique and irreplaceable to seeing each
one and the interplay between as a simple balancing of sterile numbers. Human
minds, irrational and overwrought with emotion, sought out patterns,
rationality, organization, and if we weren’t careful, we’d cure ourselves right
into a third world war.

When I got to
the outer stairs, I halted and leaned against the cold, rough wall.

This can’t be
where it’s meant to go.

“There is no
feeling in destruction,” Arthur said into my private misery. “No meaning one
way or the other. Death is a simple thing and is unstoppable. There is an end
to everything and Shiva dances without apology.”

I forced
myself to swallow the bitterness I felt. “Is that a rationalization? Are you
making excuses for Devlin’s behavior, because if you are….”

From a dark
shallow at the edge of my periphery, he reached out and caught my shoulder. Like
a peevish child, I tried to pull away, but those fingers I had admired for
their grace and artistry were suddenly like vices. Gasping, not in pain but in
surprise, I turned to demand an explanation, as silly as it might have been. He
stepped toward me in an instant, threw me off balance, and without a single
word of explanation or apology, pressed me into the wall. I staggered briefly,
but his hands turned to gentle supports and held me in place. The soft pad of
his thumb caught my chin, and forced my eyes to his.

My breath
caught in my throat as I tried to remember a moment like this, when his
practiced veneer had cracked showing traces of what turmoil was within. I
looked to find the telltale anxiousness, need, or something easy to understand,
but as always, his face was unshakably calm. He was not trying to jar my
reality, push me from my emotional state through some extravagant show. No,
this was just a moment like any other in the scripted destiny I could not yet
comprehend. Something about that civil acquiescence unsettled me.

“Do you know
why it had to be you?” he said, his voice so soft and low I almost could not
hear it.

My eyes wide,
I shook my head, captive in his hands. 

“Because you
are fearless, Lilith.”

He smiled
slowly and I began to relax. No, it was not possible that Arthur,
my
Arthur,
could be anything like Devlin, a man who’d tossed human lives aside if they fit
his plan. Such a thing was impossible. Doubt was for other people who did not
know.
I was fearless and because of that, had no reason to be faithless.

“No matter
what the cost, you will do what is necessary,” he said, and my heart plummeted.

What exactly,
I wondered, was necessary?

I struggled,
but he held me still and stared down my anxiety.

“Ours is not
an easy task, but Lilith, we were not made to care too much for ease, were we?”

A stillness
settled over me then, and halted a trembling I didn’t even realize was
occurring. Suddenly the air was close, the dark was comforting, and his smile
was the most important thing. It was no magic spell of his, but some kind of
internal peace. Something in my heart was silenced.

“I can’t be so….”

“You must be
fearless, ceaseless, and ruthless, Lilith. You cannot allow compromise of any
kind, because this is the only moment—now. You’ve always felt it, haven’t you?
The undercurrent beneath your life that pulls the ground from you. I know you
have. I know you’ve always felt like there was something you were meant to do.”

I let my mouth
fall open in a mute entreaty, but I wasn’t sure what there was to say. All our
time together had felt choreographed, set in a familiar pattern. It went only
so far and no farther, but here in the dark, there were no such thing as
boundaries.

He gave a
knowing blink, slow and deliberate. “You asked me once, how it was. If I saw
the future, or relived the past, or if I was just some kind of mind reader.”

I nodded
hesitantly, still afraid that if I breathed, the moment would scatter like so
much dust.

“I couldn’t
tell you then, but this is the moment. Now I have no choice. This is the time
when you are to know.”

I could see
how conflicted he seemed. Suddenly he was not the plotting genius or the
perfect icon. He was a man, dealing with a terrible decision that he believed,
for some reason, had already been made.

I reached up
and put my hands on his shoulders. “I’m ready. Whatever it is, say it.”

He managed a
sad smile and gathered my hands in his. For a long time, he toyed with them,
turned them over, brushed the palms with his thumbs, all the while staring into
the space without seeing it.

There he goes
again, neither here nor there,
I thought, and as I thought it, he
smiled.

“For me,” he said,
“there is only now. As I stand with you here...I sit beneath the tree, I walk
with Ananda in the garden, I sit in the coffee shop and read your sister’s
journals. As I am here with you….” He looked up, and in the glance I understood.
“I am everywhere I have ever been and everywhere I might ever be.”

I blinked at
him in astonishment.

There is only
now.

It had never
been a profound statement of the oneness of all things but the revelation of
his particular insight. Or perhaps they were one and the same.

To live every
moment of one’s life, not just every moment that would be, but every moment
that
could
be, all at once, simultaneously; it was unthinkable. Every
book he’d ever read, every word spoken, every decision made, all concurrent,
contiguous, and somehow, unconfused. He saw it all and yet somehow managed to
live it too. No wonder he had always seemed so distant to me, with brief interludes
of focus.

All those
stories, knowledge fed to me bit by bit at key times, it was not a plan, just
as Jinx had said; it was an evolution. To him, outcomes existed already, but it
was still essential that he go through the motions so that they existed for
everyone else too. To him, I was what I was, and he was an integral part of
that. Not
because
of him, but
with
him.

I collapsed
back against the wall, stunned, and finally surrendered.

“You’re here
with me….”

His eyes
distant again, he nodded.

“And you’re
there with Eva, in the alley?”

The eyes
sharpened and found my face, in sync with this moment once again. “Yes.”

“Tell her I
love her.”

“I cannot. Everything
that has been said, was what needed to be said. I have the ability to direct,
as a farmer tills his rows, but seeing all, know that I am not planting seeds. I
am simply weaving through not rows but roads and all in divergent directions.”

“Arthur, you’re
losing me.”

His lashes
swept over his cheeks but an instant, “You have already told her that you love
her, and will again. Be satisfied that she knows.”

He had stepped
back from me, though when he did, I couldn’t say. I lifted my hands to my face
and smoothed the creases I felt there.

If he was with
me,
this
me, then he was also with a different me, the me I would be,
somewhere down the line. That was how he knew, how he was so confident in my
progress. He knew us both and, without pushing, was attempting to align the
two. And then I saw it, that there was no reason to align anything, because he
was the force that had caused my transformation. Just by existing near to me, I
had changed forever.

He was not
some chess master, positioning others to his will. He was the pawn, being
positioned by our needs, our flaws, our difficulties. He belonged to the world
and at every turn had been placed to cause some kind of reaction.

A catalyst.

I took a deep
breath and let it out slowly, all disingenuous thoughts toward him stifled.

But sent by
whom? And when had it begun?

“Here with me….”

His chin dipped.

“Beneath the
tree.”

“Yes, Lilith.”

“Then, in a
way,” I whispered, “I’m there with you too.”

His smile
grew, but still it seemed almost sad. “And always will be.”

I dropped my
gaze to his feet and, in the deepest part of my soul, knew. This was the moment
he had spoken of. He had to leave. I knew his secret, and, because I knew,
everything had changed.

“There is no
other way. You understand me all too clearly.” He took a small step back, his
hand out in something of an apology.

I heard the
words and recognized them as the foreshadowing they had been. I had never
understood him before this moment, but for him, I had always known.

I smiled and
completed his thought. “If you’re here at all, it’s because you’ve seen
something worth fighting for in me. I know it now and so….”

His nod was
perfunctory and accompanied another step away.

“You’re the
general,” I whispered, but emotion caught me off guard and choked my words.

“And you,” he
replied with an endearing nod of his head, “you are the furnace. They are your
creations. I will see to it they find their use.”

His heel found
the bottom step and he drifted slowly away.

“Arthur.”

He halted,
though it seemed he did not wish to look back at me. I felt I could understand
that. “Yes, Lilith?”

I pushed away
from the wall and stood looking up at him, certain it would be the last time I
would ever see him in the flesh. He was just an outline in the dim glow of the
single gas lamp.

“I love you. I
can’t explain how, but...I do.”

The smile he
cast over his shoulder shaded into something of a boyish grin before it was
lost in the gloom. “I know.”

“Of course you
do,” I said to myself, because he had already gone.

I dropped to
the stairs and wrapped my arms around my knees. There was no going back
anymore, no point debating eventualities. I was a machine, whether it was fair
or not. Something was being asked of me, a difficult choice had to be made, and
I was the only person who could or would ever be able to make it. That was not
a reason to exist, because there was never a reason, never a purpose. There was
only what we decided, and, somewhere in my past, a line had been crossed.

It had to be
done.

“Fearless,
ceaseless, ruthless,” I murmured to myself. Fearless of the cost to myself,
because there was no cost; ceaseless because I did not tire as others did;
ruthless because there would be no stopping me.

“If come it
must, then by my hand alone.”

I got to my
feet and walked down the hall, numb. My mind wandered, thinking of the Buddha
beneath the tree, with me as his imaginary friend. I was pulled from the
fantasy by Jinx  insistently calling my name. I glanced up.

“Where’s Art? Are
you guys okay?”

I blinked. His
face seemed so adult then, either because his inner maturity had come out of
hiding or I was suddenly able to see it clearly.