“None,” he said.
Mooney received this news with great relief, then wheeled out of the living room into an open kitchen, heading for a pot of coffee and two cups that sat on a small table.
“Can I help you with that?”
“No, I’m quite able. Make yourself comfortable. The nurse brewed this up before she left; she always makes it good and strong. Do you take anything in it?”
“Black’s fine,” Derek said. He sat for a moment, then realized that the old man would have to make another trip back to get the cups. He rose again to help.
In the kitchen, he noticed signs of Elias’s last wife, referred to in Mooney’s letter of introduction. The name “Evangeline” was embroidered on a potholder. A kindly-looking white-haired woman appeared in the photographs of children and grandchildren, among tokens of a domestic orderliness that had been maintained only cursorily by the casual attention of nurses and housekeepers. But Elias seemed comfortable with his current situation, more paranoid than self-pitying. He was surprisingly large-bodied, though his legs were stick-thin in baggy slacks, and his overlarge loafers looked as if they might drop from his feet at any moment.
“You must tell me, Mr. Crowe—”
“Derek, please.”
“Perhaps I know some of your teachers.” Elias wheeled up next to the sofa, both of them facing the blank television. “I had a wide correspondence at one time.”
“My… teachers.” Derek fidgeted with the clasps on his case.
“I’m self-taught myself, although I’ve had many guides and mentors in the astral. One of my finest teachers was an African priest, handicapped like myself but greatly respected in his tribe. A man of incredible power. I have worked in the silver body with some of the great houngans—both alive and discarnate. You are familiar with the real Voudoun?”
“Yes, of course,” Derek said, grateful for a question he could answer with the proper tone of superior knowledge. “What idiots call ‘voodoo.’ “
Elias nodded solemnly. “Some cultures still respect their visionaries. They don’t judge so much by what they can see with eyes of flesh. Not like ours.”
“Ours has serious problems.”
Elias chuckled. “All the more reason to contribute what I can to its health. I want to leave something behind when I must go, something to show that my time here wasn’t wasted. Something to help those who remain behind. Even if I only reach a few of them, it will be worthwhile, eh?”
He shrugged his shoulders toward the ceiling with a sideways crook of his head and Derek gave a sly wink. Gestures of intimacy, secrecy, as if they were two conspirators signaling their mutual knowledge that the room was under surveillance by invisible technicians and they must encode everything they said.
“Is it safe to talk freely here?” Derek asked. “I know you’re concerned about the phones and the mails….”
“Safer here than most places. I spent a good many years casting the proper barriers around this house, though lately they have weakened somewhat. I’ve been ill. They struck at me through Evangeline, but she’s gone now.” He shook his bowed head. “Their doing, yes. I didn’t realize at first the lengths they’d go to; even at my age I never knew such evil cunning. That lovely, innocent woman—I thought she could speak only truth. When I think of her lips being tainted by their words….”
He broke off suddenly, glancing around him. Derek felt his skin prickling as the old man listened to the silence of the suburbs. Outside was nothing but the sound of a dry wind in the hill streets. Windchimes tinkled tunelessly in the distance, a sound that suddenly recalled a fever dream from Derek’s childhood, lying alone in the trailer at the edge of the desert mountains, a hot Santa Ana wind blowing through his mother’s clacking chimes, whispering something specific that he never could recall, so that the sound of the chimes itself terrified him inexplicably and caused him to wake. He had not remembered that feverish waking in years—if ever. It took him a moment to banish it now.
He looked up and saw Elias watching intently, his eyes black, intense, and liquid, seeming to leap and swim unpredictably within his thick bifocals. His skin was pale as ivory, except for the stains and blemishes of age. His thin hair was combed neatly straight back, like wires of pure silver. He was nodding, and now he smiled.
“You feel it, don’t you?” he said.
Derek swallowed, his neck prickling. “How could I not?” He forced himself to grin, and then Elias burst out laughing.
“We’ve joined forces now!” he said. “They’ll be sorry we’ve gotten together, oh, yes!”
Derek had thought Mooney’s paranoia would be easy to dismiss, but already it was affecting him. It was this banal setting that left him vulnerable. In the city there were so many people raving of the End of Time, so many lunatics talking to themselves and casting their hands in the air with wild laughter, that one quickly learned to walk around them. In this case, he had volunteered to confine himself with one of their tribe. It might not be worth the trouble in the long run. There were other sources from which he could crib his books.
Well, he had come all this way. One afternoon’s interview would lead to no harm.
Derek brought out his tape recorder and set it down on the sofa beside him. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Oh, no, no! You don’t want to miss a thing. And you’ll let me know if I repeat myself, won’t you?”
“If I don’t, this will,” he said, tapping the machine. “Now, why don’t we start with some early reminiscences? That will give me some idea of where to begin. A sense of… of the shape of your life.”
“The shape?” The old man chuckled bitterly. “I can tell you that directly. It’s a cube, a cell, a locked cage. It has exactly the dimensions of this room. We all inhabit such cages, don’t we? I’ve been unique only in having found a temporary means of release—a furlough, though by no means an escape. Even when I nearly shed this body—I wrote you of the time I nearly entered my teacher’s womb, didn’t I?—even then, I would have been reborn into this world. I’d still be a prisoner.”
His head hung forward, eyes fixed on his knees.
“I’m more advanced than others, of course. I’ve learned a few tricks which I hope to pass on to ease the pain of our incarceration.”
Derek hadn’t expected Elias to slip into such a bleak mood. He wondered how to distract him into other, lighter veins, telling the sorts of anecdotes the general reader enjoyed. There was little market for occult pessimism.
“I wonder if perhaps you know,” Elias said, as if talking to himself. “Is that why we came together?”
Derek almost asked what Elias was talking about, but it was an occult axiom that if you must ask, you are not ready to be told. He decided to feign comprehension and let the old man ramble, filling in the silence. But Elias stopped speaking altogether and sat there staring at his hands.
“Do you think it’s wise to dwell on these things?” Derek asked.
“Mm?” Elias’s head jerked up. “Wise? No… no, you’re right. We mustn’t discourage people—especially not the young. There’s always hope, isn’t there? That’s the example I want to set. Look at me: I’ve been trapped my whole life, but I’ve accomplished a great deal. There are things we can do with our lives that amount to more than merely rattling our chains. I don’t mean pastimes, but important things. We can change this material plane for the better. Then those who come after us—including our reborn selves—will have a greater opportunity for advancement, for true freedom. But it’s a constant battle….”