The List Of Seven (50 page)

The Professor smiled politely. 'The signal difference, I find, is that, lacking the polished veneer of what we Europeans arrogantly pronounce 'civilized,' less developed societies maintain a direct relationship to the natural world. As a consequence, they enjoy a more straightforward experience of that part of nature which remains unseen to us: the spirit world, specifically the world of the devas, or elementals, who inform and inhabit the physical world which we presumptively assume to be the limit of existence. Our colleagues in the medical profession dismiss these people as foolish, primitive, superstitious, at the mercy of irrational fancies and terrors. Contrarily, after years of examination, I'm inclined to consider them wise and knowing, attuned with the world they live in to a degree undreamt of by ourselves."

Doyle nodded attentively, glancing at Chandros, deep in a one-sided conversation with Eileen, who seemed as equally preoccupied as Doyle with her soup.

"I myself was quite unconvinced of their existence for the longest time," said the Bishop, between noisy slurps. "As you can well imagine—public school, Church of England, already a vicar—"

"Unaware of whose existence?" asked Doyle.

"Why, the elementals, of course," beamed the Bishop. He had managed to splatter droplets of broth all over his spectacles. "Until I met Professor Vamberg—then the scales fell from my eyes like autumn leaves!"

"They are known by different names in different cultures," said Vamberg, clearly irritated by the Bishop's cheery intrusion. "You are of Irish descent, are you not, Doctor?"

Doyle nodded. His soup was gone; he was tempted to ask Vamberg, who hadn't so much as wet his spoon, if he wouldn't mind giving his over.

"In Ireland you know them as leprechauns: the little people. Here, in Britain, they're called brownies or elves, with many regional variations: 'knockers' in Cornwall, the pixies of Scotland, the trows of Shetland and Orcadia. The Germans, of course, know them as kobolds or goblins—"

"I'm familiar with the mythology," said Doyle, annoyed by the man's condescending pedantry.

"Ah, but you see, it is a great deal more than mere mythology, Doctor," said Vamberg, waving his spoon for emphasis.

In came the next course; thank God, thought Doyle. It's not enough to perish by way of starvation, they have to bore me to death simultaneously.

"Roast partridge on a bed of cabbage," announced the Bishop.

Partridge? There must be some mistake, thought Doyle. This was a single wing, and it was easily the size of a turkey's. And that cabbage leaf covered the entire plate. They were in the north of England: Where did one find produce like this in the depths of winter? Gift horses, decided Doyle, tasting the first cut of the wing; the meat was succulent and tender and, he had to admit, on first bite as flavorful as anything he'd ever eaten.

"These figures of legend, so familiar to us from folktales and children's stories, are in actuality the unseen architects and builders of the natural world," continued Vamberg, as disinterested in the partridge as he had been in the soup. "Wood nymphs, water naiads, sprites of the air—there is a reason why these traditions persist in every culture, even in one as ostensibly advanced as our own—"

"What reason would that be?" said Doyle, unable to resist picking up the wing with his hands and tearing into it.

"Because they are real," said Vamberg. "I've seen them. Spoken to them. Danced with them."

Not recently you haven't, thought Doyle. "Really."

"Shy creatures, extremely reticent, but once contact is made—and I was able to do so initially with the help of Caribbean tribal priests—one quickly learns how extremely eager they are to cooperate with us."

"How terribly interesting," said Doyle, finishing off his partridge.

"Isn't it just?" piped in the Bishop, trickles of grease shining like tinsel around his mouth and chin.

"Cooperate how, exactly?" asked Doyle.

"Why in doing what they do best," said Vamberg. "Growing things."

"Growing things."

Vamberg picked the immense cabbage leaf off his plate. "What if I were to tell you the cabbage seed that produced this leaf was planted in dry sand three weeks ago, deprived of all water or nutrients, and harvested this very morning?"

"I would say, Professor Vamberg, that you've spent too much time dancing around toadstools," said Doyle.

Vamberg smiled dryly and lifted the wing from his plate. "And if I were to tell you that when it was freshly dressed this afternoon, this bird was only two weeks old?"

Servants were clearing and laying in the next course, two of them rolling in a silver-hooded steam table.

"So these elementals, as you call them, presumably have nothing better to do than help you raise partridges the size of eagles?" asked Doyle.

"Trout with lemon!" said the Bishop.

The hood of the table was rolled back, revealing a single, intact fish on a garnish of lemon and parsley. Its coloring and markings identified it as brown trout, but the thing was the size of a sturgeon. The servants carved and served. Doyle caught Eileen's eyes, hers filled more with wonder than the profound unease stirring inside him.

Vamberg smiled like Carroll's Cheshire cat. "Oh ye of little faith."

A plate of the trout landed in front of Doyle. As savory as it looked and smelled, he was rapidly losing his appetite; the idea of this mysteriously denatured meat made him queasy. Glancing around the table, he noticed Alexander Sparks also refrained from eating, instead staring intently across at Eileen. At the other end, a napkin tucked in his collar like a child's bib, His Highness the Duke of Clarence aggressively sucked up his fish in greedy, gluttonous mouthfuls, sloshing it down with sloppy gouts of wine, all the while making noisy drones of infantile contentment, completely oblivious to the company and his surroundings.

"Delicious!" pronounced the Bishop. A beautiful fair-haired altar boy stood at his side. The Bishop whispered in his ear and ran his stubby fingers possessively through the boy's locks.

"Another benefit unlooked for came from that encounter— this was on the island of Haiti, by the way—when the priests introduced me to an elixir of various herbs, roots, and organic extracts they said the elementals had revealed to them," said Vamberg. "The priests of Haiti have been using this compound judiciously for centuries: They discovered that when administered in the right amount, in conjunction with certain medical practices, this compound virtually strips a man or woman-—any man or woman—of their conscious will."

"I'm sorry?" asked Doyle.

'Their will is no longer their own. It renders them docile, pliant, completely under the command of the priests, who

men employ these people however they see fit, as field or household help. Even the most intractable subjects become obedient. Trustworthy. Well behaved."

Slaves. Mute and unreasoning as marionettes, servers were laying in a meat course: Doyle tried not to think what manner of hideously altered beast might have yielded these ripe morsels of flesh.

"That's how Haiti solved the servant problem," chimed in the Bishop with a broad wink. "How nice to speak freely in front of the help."

Vamberg sent the Bishop another venomous look before continuing. "The priests are a closed fraternity; this knowledge is guarded with their lives. I was one of few outsiders— the only European—who has ever been given access to this treasure. I've even improved the effect with a simple, surgical procedure, used in conjunction with the compound."

No wonder Bodger Nuggins ran, thought Doyle. Better dead facedown in the Thames than an ambulatory corpse like Lansdown Dilks, stored away in some root cellar like a sack of nightsoil—

"Marvelous!" said the Bishop.

"It was years later, during my travels in the high country of Tibet, that I met a man with the vision to see how this procedure might one day be utilized in a broader, more socially useful fashion." Vamberg gave a nod to Alexander Sparks.

So that's how it began, with Sparks and Vamberg. The meeting of two dark minds, a seed brought back to English ground to reach its full flower of corruption—

A crash of crockery startled him. A servant on the far side of the table had dropped a plate. The man bent down, his movements addled and sluggish, and attempted to scrape up the fragments of china and the scattered food around it with his hands.

"Clumsy fool," muttered General Drummond.

A jolt ran through Doyle; the back of the man's neck had been recently and roughly shaved, and a vivid, suppurating triangular scar ran across its length. Crude blue thread stitched the flaps of the wound loosely together. Another servant went to the damaged man, straightening the poor wretch to his feet.

Doyle's heart sank.

It was Barry.

His eyes were dead, light and life entirely gone from them.

"Here, here," said Alexander. "What's your name, clumsy boy?"

Barry shuffled slowly around and stared at him uncompre-hendingly, a thin line of drool forming in the corner of his mouth.

Alexander sprang to his feet and cuffed Barry harshly across the ear. He accepted the blow as passively as an exhausted pack animal. Doyle gripped the arms of his chair to keep from leaping up at Sparks.

"Speak when you're spoken to, boy."

Some dim whisper of cognition surfaced in the well of his broken mind. Barry nodded. The weak noise that emerged from his mouth could hardly be understood for a word.

"Since you've demonstrated you're no use doing your job, perhaps you can entertain us, you stupid cow," said Alexander. "Dance for us now, give us a jig, come on then."

Alexander clapped his hands, encouraging the others at the table to join in, establishing a steady rhythm. The quartet at Alexander's prompting began to fiddle an Irish jig. Alexander slapped Barry again, spinning him around, then prodded him with the end of a cane.

"Dance, boy. Do as you're told."

Doyle could see the music seeping through to what was left of Barry. He tried to shuffle his feet, but the result was pathetic, the slightest movement costly and excruciatingly painful. His arms swung limply at his sides. A spreading stain appeared in the crotch of his pants.

The company of seven and their royal guest found the exhibition endlessly entertaining. Prince Eddy seemed on the verge of jumping to his feet and joining in. The Bishop laughed so hard he held his sides and doubled over in his chair, face red with exertion.

Doyle looked to his left. Eileen was pale, fighting her emotions; there were tears in her eyes. He gestured to her: Show them nothing.

Unable to sustain the effort, Barry slumped to his knees against a chair, gasping for breath, a dry rattle in his chest. A thin line of milky red fluid ran from his wound and around his neck. Alexander threw his head back and laughed, then

waved dismissively. The music stopped. Two servants lifted Barry by the arms and guided him gently but firmly out of the room, as one would a doddering, incontinent pensioner.

"Delightful!" said the Bishop.

They put him here so we'd see, thought Doyle furiously. We'd see how they've decimated his mind and robbed him of his soul. This wasn't only Vamberg's drug at work; they had cut Barry, cut crudely into the back of his head and obliterated something essential to his humanity.

Doyle wanted to kill them for it.

Across the table, Alexander grinned viciously as he reclaimed his seat, looking slowly back and forth at Doyle and Eileen, showing his teeth. It was the most naked expression of feeling Doyle had seen the man display.

He likes to see fear, realized Doyle. He feeds off it.

"You were saying, Professor," said Alexander.

"Yes. Having made this providential association, my new friend and I continued our peregrinations around the world, but with renewed purpose," Vamberg went on, leaning close enough to Doyle that the first words gave him a start.

"Purpose."

"We pursued the acquaintance of elemental forces in other countries, other continents. To our amazement, we discovered they were more than willing to disclose their secrets to us— and among them, Doctor, are wonders to behold: life itself!—in trade for a service which only we, in turn, could provide for them."

Doyle nodded, not willing to speak, unable to trust he could keep from betraying his growing terror. Desecrating Barry in this grisly way, it was likely they had done the same to his brother. The inference that the same fate awaited himself and Eileen was unmistakable.

"These elementals of the earth had once been united under the governance of a unifying spirit," continued Vamberg. "A powerful entity, worshiped by primitive people of the world in a variety of guises throughout history. A being tragically, savagely misunderstood by our religiously intolerant Western forebears—I won't mention any names—"

The Bishop chortled agreeably.

"—who have systemically engaged in brutal, senseless persecution of this entity and its legions of worshipers. The ascendancy of Western man, with his paltry, self-centered concerns and small-minded monotheistic obsessions, finally succeeded in driving this being out of the physical plane altogether, into a twilight, purgatorial existence."

"The Devil," said Doyle.

"The Christian conception of him, yes. Here was their proposal: In exchange for the continued bestowal of their beneficent genius, the elementals asked our cooperation in returning this great spirit into the world, there to assume its rightful seat among them. This was the service they required of us—it seems only humans could provide such a service. And so, with the help of our assembled colleagues, for the greater glory of man and nature, this we have agreed to do."

The rest of the table grew quiet, watching Doyle carefully for his reaction. Insane, he thought. All of them. Beyond the pale.

"You're speaking of the Dweller on the Threshold," he said.

"Oh, he has many, many names," said the Bishop cheerfully.

Reaching in to grab the decanter of wine, Prince Eddy succeeded in knocking it over, flooding the tablecloth with a shocking stream of black-red claret. The Prince giggled girlishly. A dark look passed between Alexander and Dr. Gull, who responded by rising to his feet.