Douglas Child - The Wheel of Darkness

He spread his hands as if the answer was obvious.

Constance looked at him in confusion. What he was saying did strike her as true. She had been repulsed by the bourgeois airs and pork-belly gentility of most of the passengers she’d met. And she was shocked and outraged by the brutal working and living conditions of the crew. Some of the things Pendergast was saying rang an uncomfortable chord in her, arousing and reinforcing her own long-held misanthropic impulses.

“No, Constance,” Pendergast went on. “The only two people worth saving are ourselves.”

She shook her head. “You’re referring to the passengers. What about the crew and staff? They’re just trying to make a living. Do they deserve to die?”

Pendergast waved his hand. “And they, for their part, are expendable drones, part of the great sea of working-class humanity that comes and goes from the shores of the world like the tide on the beach, leaving no mark.”

“You can’t mean that. Humanity is everything to you. You’ve spent your whole life trying to save the lives of others.”

“Then I’ve wasted my life on a useless, even frivolous, endeavor. The one thing my brother Diogenes and I always agreed on was there could be no more odious a discipline than anthropology: imagine, devoting one’s life to the study of one’s fellow man.” He picked up Brock’s monograph from the table, flipped through it, handed it to Constance. “Look at this.”

Constance glanced at the open page. It contained a black-and-white reproduction of an oil painting: a young, ravishing angel bending over a perplexed-looking man, guiding his hand over a manuscript page.

“

Saint Matthew and the Angel

,” he said. “Do you know it?”

She glanced at him, puzzled. “Yes.”

“Then you know there were few images on this earth more sublime. Or more beautiful. Look at the expression of intense effort on Matthew’s face—as if every word of the Gospel he’s writing was struggling up from the very fiber of his being. And compare it to the languid approach of the angel assisting him—the way the head lolls; the half-naïve, half-coy posturing of the legs; the almost scandalously sensual face. Look at the way Matthew’s dusty left foot kicks out at us, almost breaking the plane of the painting. No wonder the patron refused it! But if the angel seems effeminate, we only need to glimpse the power, the glory in those magnificent wings, to remind us that we are in the presence of the divine.” He paused a moment. “Do you know, Constance, why—of all the reproductions in this monograph—this one is in black and white?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Because no color photograph of it exists. The painting was destroyed. Yes—this magnificent expression of creative genius was bombed into oblivion during World War II. Now, tell me: if I had to choose between this painting or the lives of a million useless, ignorant, ephemeral people—the humanity you say is so important to me—which do you think I’d choose to perish in that conflagration?” He pushed the image toward her.

Constance stared at him in horror. “How can you say such a vile thing? And what gives you the

right

to say it? What makes you so different?”

“My dear Constance! Don’t think for a minute that I believe I’m better than the rest of the horde. I’m as guilty of the fundamental flaws of bestial man as anyone. And one of those flaws is self-interest. I am worth saving because I wish my life to continue—and I’m in a position to do something about it. This is not just the thin end of the wedge anymore: we are sailing toward catastrophe at flank speed. And on a practical level, how could I possibly save this ship? As in any catastrophe, it’s every man for himself.”

“Do you really think you could live with yourself if you abandoned all these people to their fate?”

“Of course I could. And so could you.”

Constance hesitated. “I’m not so sure,” she murmured. Deep down, a part of her found something deeply seductive in his words—and that is what disturbed her most of all.

“These people mean nothing to us. They are like the dead you read about in the newspapers. We will simply leave this floating Gomorrah and return to New York. We shall lose ourselves in intellectual pastimes, philosophy, poetry, discourse: 891 Riverside is exceedingly well furnished as a place of retirement, reflection, and seclusion.” He paused. “And was this not the way of your own first guardian, my distant relation, Enoch Leng? His crimes were far more heinous than our little moment of self-interest. And yet he managed to devote himself to a life of physical comfort and intellectual satisfaction. A long, long life. You know this to be true, Constance: you were there with him, all along.” And he nodded again, as if this were the killing stroke of his argument.

“It’s true. I was there. I was there to see the pangs of conscience slowly eat through his peace of mind like worms through rotten wood. In the end there was so little left of a brilliant man it was almost a blessing when . . .” She could say no more. But her mind was made up now: she knew she could not be persuaded by Pendergast’s nihilistic message. “Aloysius, I don’t care what you say. This is horribly wrong. You’ve always helped others. You’ve devoted your entire career to it.”

“Precisely! And to what advantage? What has it ever profited me other than frustration, regret, alienation, mortification, pain, and reprimand? If I were to leave the FBI, do you think my absence would be mourned? Thanks in part to my own incompetence, my only friend in the Bureau died a most unpleasant death. No, Constance: I have at last learned a bitter truth. All this time, I’ve been laboring pointlessly—the fruitless labor of Sisyphus—trying to save that which, ultimately, is unsalvageable.” With that he eased himself down again in the leather armchair and picked up his teacup.

Constance looked at him in horror. “This isn’t the Aloysius Pendergast I know. You’ve changed. Ever since you came back from Blackburn’s stateroom, you’ve been acting strangely.”

Pendergast took another sip of tea, sniffed dismissively. “I’ll tell you what happened. The scales finally fell from my eyes.” Carefully, he placed the teacup back on the table and sat forward. “ It showed me the truth.”

“It?”

“The Agozyen. It’s a truly remarkable object, Constance, a mandala that allows you to see through to the real truth at the center of the world: the pure, unadulterated truth. A truth so powerful that it would break a weak mind. But for those of us with strong intellects, it is a revelation. I know myself now: who I am, and—most importantly— what I want .”

“Don’t you remember what the monks said? The Agozyen is evil, a dark instrument of vengeance, whose purpose is to cleanse the world.”

“Yes. A somewhat ambiguous choice of words, isn’t it? Cleanse the world. I, of course, will not put it to such purpose. Rather, I will install it in the library of our Riverside Drive mansion, where I can spend a lifetime contemplating its wonders.” Pendergast sat back and picked up his teacup again. “The Agozyen will thus accompany me into the flotation device. As will you— assuming you find my plan to be a palatable one.”

Constance swallowed. She did not reply.

“Time is growing short. The time has come for you to make your decision, Constance—are you with me . . . or against me?”

And as he took another sip, his pale cat’s eyes regarded her calmly over the rim of the teacup.

59

LESEUR HAD DECIDED THAT THE BEST WAY WAS TO GO ALONE.