The Wolf Gift (54 page)

Reuben nodded vigorously. He took a deep drink of the red wine. “But surely you’ll agree,” said Reuben, “that human experience pales in comparison to the wolf experience, that every single aspect of the wolf experience is more intense.” He hesitated. Morphenkinder, Morphengift—these were beautiful words.

But he remembered the words he had chosen for this himself when he was entirely alone: the Wolf Gift.

Yes, it was a gift.

“We don’t exist at maximum intensity all the time, do we?” Margon replied. “We sleep, we doze, we meditate—we discover ourselves in our passions and our disasters, but also in our slumber, and in our dreams.”

Reuben conceded that.

“This music you’re playing for us, this piano music by Satie. This is not Beethoven’s Ninth, is it?” Margon asked.

No, and it’s not Brahms’s Second Symphony either, Reuben thought, remembering his musings of last night.

“So how many nights is the change going to just come over me,” asked Stuart, “whether I want it or not?”

“Try really fighting it,” said Thibault. “You might be surprised.”

“It’s too soon for you to resist it,” said Margon. “It will come on you every night for perhaps fourteen days. Now, with Reuben he learned to control it after what?—the tenth? But only because he had yielded to it so completely before.”

“Yes. That’s probably so,” said Thibault.

“But it’s always been a fortnight in my experience,” said Felix. “After that, the power is infinitely more controllable. For many, seven nights in any one month is enough to maintain vigor and sanity. Of course, you can learn to keep it down indefinitely. There is often a discernible personal rhythm to it, an individual cycle; but these responses vary greatly, and of course the voices of those in need of protection—the voices can provoke us anytime. But in the beginning, you need that fortnight because the Chrism is still working on your cells.”

“Ah, the cells, the cells,” said Reuben. “What were those words that Marrok used?” He turned to Laura.

“The pluripotent progenitor cells,” said Laura. “He said that the Chrism worked on these cells and triggered the mutation.”

“Well, of course,” said Stuart.

“Or so we theorize,” said Felix, “with the feeble insights we have today.” He took a deep drink of his wine, and sat back. “We reason that those are the only cells which can be responsible for the changes that take place in us—that all humankind has the potential to be Morphenkinder—but that’s based on what we now know of human chemistry, which is more than we knew twenty years ago, or twenty years before that, and so forth and so on.”

“Nobody has yet clearly defined what happens,” said Thibault. “In the early days of modern science, we attempted to grasp things with the new critical vocabulary at our disposal. We had such high hopes. We outfitted laboratories, hired scientists under clever ruses. We thought we’d finally learn all there was to know about ourselves. We learned so little! What we know is what you’ve observed in yourselves.”

“It involves glands, hormones, surely,” said Reuben.

“Indisputably,” said Felix, “but why and how?”

“Well, how did it start?” Stuart asked. He smacked the table with his hand. “Has it always been with us, I mean with human beings? Margon, where did all this begin?”

“There are answers to those questions …,” said Margon under his breath. He was reticent, obviously.

“Who was the very first Morphenkind ever?” asked Stuart. “Come on, you must have a Genesis myth. You have to tell us these things. Cells, glands, chemicals—that’s one thing. But what’s the history of this? What’s the tale?”

Silence. Felix and Thibault were waiting for Margon to answer.

Margon was considering. He appeared troubled, and for a moment lost in his thoughts.

“The ancient history isn’t all that inspiring,” said Margon. “What’s important now is that you learn how to use these gifts.”

There was a pause and very gently Laura spoke up. “Does the hunger increase over time—the desire to hunt and feast?”

“Not really,” said Margon. “It’s always inside us. We feel partial, diminished, spiritually starved if we don’t give in to it, but I would say that is there from the beginning. Indeed, one can get sick of it, and withdraw for long periods, ignoring the voices.” He stopped.

“And your strength, does this increase?” Laura asked.

“Skill increases, of course,” said Margon, “and wisdom. Ideally that increases as well. We have bodies that renew themselves constantly. But our hearing, our vision, our physical abilities—these do not increase.”

He looked at Reuben as though inviting his questions now. He hadn’t done this before.

“The voices,” said Reuben. “Can we talk now about the voices?”

He’d tried to be patient, but this seemed the moment surely to cut to the point.

“Why do we hear the voices?” he asked. “I mean I understand our sensitive hearing, it’s part of the transformation, but why do the voices of people who need us bring on the change? And why would stem cells in our bodies transform us into something that can track the scent of malice and cruelty—it’s the scent of evil, isn’t it—and we’re driven to seek to wipe it out?”

He put down his napkin. He looked intently at Margon.

“This is for me the central mystery,” Reuben continued. “It’s the moral mystery for me. Man into monster, all right, it’s not magic. It’s science and it’s science we don’t know. I can accept that. But why do I smell fear and suffering? Why am I impelled to go to it? Every time I’ve killed,
it’s been a consummately evil perpetrator. I’ve never erred.” He looked from Margon to Felix and to Thibault. “Surely it’s the same for you.”

“It is,” said Thibault. “But it’s chemical. It’s in our physical nature. We smell evil and we are driven almost madly to attack it, destroy it. We cannot distinguish between an innocent victim and ourselves. They are one and the same to us. What the victim suffers we suffer.”

“Is this God-given?” asked Stuart. “Are you going to tell me that?”

“I’m telling you just the opposite,” said Thibault. “These are finely developed biological traits, rooted in the elusive chemistry of our glands and our brains.”

“Why is it that particular way?” asked Reuben. “Why aren’t we chemically driven to track the innocent and devour them? They’re sweet enough.”

Margon smiled. “Don’t try it,” he said. “You’ll fail.”

“Oh, I know. This is what undid Marrok. He couldn’t bring himself merely to do away with Laura. He had to ask forgiveness of her, launching into a long confession as to why she had to die.”

Margon nodded.

“How old was Marrok?” asked Reuben. “How much experience had he had? Shouldn’t he have been able to defeat us both?”

Margon nodded. “Marrok wanted to do away with himself,” he said. “Marrok was weary, careless—the shell of the being he’d once been.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” said Laura. “He challenged us to destroy him. At first, I thought he was trying to confuse us, frighten us to death, so to speak. Then I realized he simply couldn’t do what he wanted unless we fought back.”

“That’s exactly right,” said Reuben. “And then when we fought back, he wasn’t able to overmaster us. Certainly he must have, on some level, known that this would be the case.”

“You are going to tell me, aren’t you,” asked Stuart, “who this person was, this Marrok?”

“The story of Marrok is finished,” said Margon. “For reasons of his own he wanted to destroy Reuben. He’d passed the Chrism through carelessness and convinced himself that he had to eliminate the evidence of his mistake.”

“Just as I passed it to you,” murmured Reuben.

“Ah, but you’re very young,” said Thibault. “Marrok was old.”

“And so my life opens up in flaming colors,” said Stuart exuberantly. “And with the blare of trumpets!”

Margon laughed indulgently with a knowing glance at Felix.

“But truly, why do we seek to protect the victims of evil, to prevent them from being murdered or raped?” Reuben asked.

“Little wolf,” said Margon, “you want a splendid answer, don’t you? A moral answer, as you say. I wish I had one for you. I fear it was a matter of evolution like everything else.”

“This evolved in Morphenkinder?” asked Reuben.

“No,” said Margon. He shook his head. “It evolved in the species from which the power came to us. And they were not
Homo sapiens sapiens
as we are. They were something entirely different, rather like
Homo ergaster
or
Homo erectus
. Do you know those terms?”

“Yes, I know them,” said Stuart. “And that’s exactly what I suspected. It was an isolated species, thriving somewhere in an out-of-the-way pocket of the world, right? Like
Homo floresiensis
—the hobbit species in Indonesia—a humanoid offshoot different from everything else we know.”

“What is the hobbit species?” asked Reuben.

“Little people, no more than three feet tall,” said Laura, “skeletons just found a few years ago, evolved completely separately from
Homo sapiens sapiens
.”

“Oh, I remember this,” said Reuben, “yes.”

“Tell us, tell us about this species,” said Stuart insistently.

Felix appeared uneasy and was about to try to quiet him when Margon gestured that it was all right.

Margon apparently had hoped to avoid this part of the story. He was thoughtful, then agreed to go on.

“First we clear the board,” he said gesturing to the table. “I need a moment in my thoughts.”

T
HE PLATTERS
of the feast were relegated to the kitchen island counter, a spread that would sustain the house all evening long.

Once again, the entire company worked swiftly, quietly, replenishing the water, the wine, setting down carafes of hot coffee, and green tea.

The fresh-baked pies were brought into the dining room, apple, cherry, peach. The soft white French cheeses, plates of candies, fruits.

Margon took his place again at the head of the table. He appeared to have misgivings, but one glance at Stuart’s eager face and Reuben’s patient but inquisitive expression appeared to confirm for him that he had to go on.

“Yes,” said Margon, “there was such a species, an isolated and dying species of primates who were not what we are and they did exist on an isolated island, yes, thousands of years ago off the African coast.”

“And this power came from them?” asked Stuart.

“Yes,” said Margon, “through a very foolish man—or a wise man depending on one’s point of view—who sought to breed with them, and to acquire the power they had—to change from cooperative ape man to ravening wolf man when threatened.”

“And the man bred with them,” Stuart said.

“No. That was not successful,” said Margon. “He acquired the power by being severely and repeatedly bitten, but only after he’d been prepared by imbibing the fluids of the species—the urine, the blood—in whatever quantities he could acquire for two years. He had also invited playful bites from the tribe whenever he could. They had befriended him, and he was an outcast from his people—exiled from the only real city in the whole world.”

His voice had darkened as he said those words.

A silence fell over them all. They were all looking at Margon, who stared at the water in his glass. The expression on his face was deeply perplexing
to Reuben, and obviously maddened Stuart, but Reuben sensed there was more to this remembering, this retelling, than simple weariness or distaste. Something troubled Margon about the telling of the tale.

“But how long ago was this?” Stuart asked. “What do you mean, the only real city in the world?” He was wildly stimulated, and obviously thrilled, his smile broadening as he repeated the words.

“Stuart, please …,” Reuben pleaded. “Let Margon tell it in his own way.”

After a long moment, Laura spoke up.

“You’re talking of yourself, aren’t you?” she said.

Margon nodded.

“Is it difficult to remember?” asked Reuben respectfully. He couldn’t fathom this man’s facial expressions. He appeared at once remote and then vital, at once totally absent from all around him and then again completely, openly engaged. But what was to be expected?

It was wondrous and shocking to contemplate, that this was an immortal man. And it was no more than Reuben had long suspected. Only the length of time shocked him. But the secret, that these beings were immortal? It felt like something revealed to him in his own blood by the Chrism. Something he couldn’t quite absorb yet could never forget. But even before the Chrism ever entered his veins, in his very first encounter with the photograph of the distinguished gentlemen in the library, he had sensed that an otherworldly knowledge bound the men together.

Stuart’s eyes were locked on Margon, scanning his face, his form, his hand that rested on the table—just feasting on all the little details of the man.

And what do they tell you? Reuben wondered. That so little has changed with us in thousands of years, that one so old can walk down the street in any city and go unnoticed really except for his unusual poise perhaps and the subtle, wise expression on his face? He was an imposing man, but why? He was commanding, but why? He was forthcoming and yet somehow utterly unyielding.

“Tell us what happened,” said Stuart as gently as he could. “Why were you exiled? What did you do?”

“Refuse to worship the gods,” said Margon, his words coming in a half murmur as he stared forward. “Refuse to sacrifice in the Temple to deities carved out of stone. Refuse to recite hymns to the monotonous
beat of drums about the marriage of gods and goddesses who never existed and which never took place. Refuse to tell the people that if they did not worship, if they did not sacrifice, if they did not break their backs in the fields and digging the canals that watered them, that the gods would bring the cosmos to an end. Margon the Godless refused to tell lies.”

He raised his voice just a little. “No, I do not have trouble remembering,” he said. “But some deep emotional and visceral faith in the act of recounting it has long been lost.”

“Why didn’t they just execute you?” Stuart asked.