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animate in him a great fear of us. He will take nothing important away; he
dares not. Within moments of his depar-ture the crew that is waiting in the
basement will come up and strip the house of every single scrap of evidence.
Mike is an actor now in the terrible theater of Lilith. He will strut and
posture until the end of the play.
He will not escape me.
Look at the words I have just written. He will not escape me. I'm sure of
that, I suppose.
By going where he has gone, Mike Banion has delivered himself to our
control. We are vastly better equipped for this game than he. We have
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people, resources, equipment, and above all the insight of the demons
to guide us. For his part, Mike is afraid even to involve his own men for
fear that some may be members of our Church.
Mankind drifts along, haunted by gibbering spirits and useless gods. At the
bottom of each human soul is the evil old ape from which we have sprung. We,
the transitional species, half-animal and half-god, all full of tragedies and
destructions.
I am almost overwhelmed with a worshipful desire to get on with our great
work. What a mercy bubonic positive 3 will be. Homo sapiens has suffered
itself for a hundred thousand years. It is past time for this
awful tragedy to end.
The actors upon the stage are at last dissolving into dark.
Only the Inquisition can stop us now. But will it? We are very close to
success. And yet . . . there is always the possibility of something
overlooked.
The Inquisition spins subtle webs.
I worry, turning the same few facts over in my mind again and again. I imagine
priests silent, careful, fanatical slipping through the darkness, filling
every ignored corner, obsessed with their mission to save a religion and a
humanity that are both already dead.
Most human creatures, in their secret hearts, hunger for destruction. Freud's
"death wish" is the instinct
of a defec-tive species toward its own extinction.
As the church of the destruction of man, we use the great human symbols of
death: the unblinking eyes of Thoth, the steel helmet of the Black Prince, the
glittering silver death's head of the SS.
Mankind longs so much for an end to itself that it has even devised means of
mass suicide. Or else why are there such vast nuclear arsenals on the earth?
If man does it himself, with his atomic bombs, the race's death agony will
last for years. The few destroyed in the explosions will be lucky.
As for the rest radiation poisoning, burns, infection violence, and
starvation will take them ... so very slowly. Dr.
Cochran's new bubonic positive 3 kills quickly in under ten minutes, to
judge from our experience with
Terence Quist. We, at least, are merciful.
Chapter Eighteen
THE INCREDIBLE REALITY that Jonathan's instruments had unlocked tore
at Patricia's mind, threatening her very sanity.
From the moment she had understood what he meant she had thought of only one
thing:
escape.
If she had been able to magically trade bodies with somebody else
she would have done it. But that was impossible. She was in herself and
she couldn't get out.
He was trapped as well. Two mutants.
Who felt like, wanted to be, in their hearts were just ordinary people.
They were going to go where they could live the lives they coveted. Their
wants were simple: a home and children. Just like everybody else, they had
a right to a quiet life.
We can life in sunshine. The shadows that have caressed us can be burned away
They crept through the dangerous silence of Kew Gar-dens, beneath the black
intricate trees lining the streets, their feet falling softly on the
close cropped lawns and spotless sidewalks. It was so quiet their
breathing seemed to shake the air.
Every movement Patricia made, every rustle of her skirt or touch of bare
arm against a shrub, almost stopped her heart. Slowly they drew closer to
the Banion house and whatever might await them there.
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Had there been a choice they would have gone directly from the lab to the Port
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