Люциус Шепард - The Best of Lucius Shepard

“I think so. I don’t know for sure. Whatever he did, it produced a lot of heat.” She crossed her legs, yielding up a sigh. “I wish it had stopped with that.”

I asked what had happened.

“It’s too long a story to tell, but the upshot was, he built a veve. … Do you know what a veve is?”

“The things they draw on the floors of voodoo temples? Little patterns?”

“That’s them. They relate to the voodoo gods, the loas. ” She flicked a speck of something off her knee. “Donnell… my patient. He built the veve of Ogoun Badagris out of copper. Several tons of copper. It was immense. He said it enabled him to focus energy. He used to walk around on top of it and… one day there was an explosion.” She made a helpless gesture. “I don’t understand what happened.”

Neither did I understand. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea that Pellerin might be some kind of green-eyed Jesus; yet I didn’t believe she was lying.

“What do youthink was going on with him?” I asked. “With Pellerin. I mean, what’s your theory? You must have a theory.”

“You want to hear? I’ve been told it’s pretty out there.”

“Yeah, and nothing about this is out there, so your theory’s got to be way off base.”

She laughed. “Okay. The bacteria we injected into Josey was the same strain we used at Tulane. All the slow-burners have reproduced those designs in one way or another. It’s as if they’re expressing the various aspects of Ogoun. Doctor Crain’s theory was that because the bacteria eventually infested the entire brain, the patients used more of their brains than normal people—this resulted in what seemed to be miraculous powers. And since the bacterial strain was the same, it prevailed upon the host brain to acquire similar characteristics. That makes a certain amount of sense as far as it goes, but Crain was trying to explain voodoo in terms of science, and some of it can’t be explained except in voodoo terms.”

She paused, as if to gather her thoughts. “Someday we may discover a biochemical factor that makes the patients prone to seeing the veve patterns. But we’ll never be able to explain away all the mystery surrounding Ezawa’s work. I think he discovered the microbiological analogue of possession. In a voodoo ceremony, a possession occurs quickly. The god takes over your body while you’re dancing or having a drink. You jerk around as the god acclimates to the flesh, and then you begin acting like that god. With the bacteria, it takes longer and the transition’s smoother. You notice a growing awareness in the patients that they’re different. Not just because they’ve come back from the dead. The real difference lies in the things they see and feel. They sense there’s something qualitatively different about themselves. They recognize that they have their own agendas. They grow beyond their life stories the way Jesus and Buddha outgrew the parameters of their lives. Things Donnell said… they led me to believe that the bacteria allowed them to access their gro bon ange . Do you know the term? The immortal portion of the soul? According to voodoo, anyway. And that in turn opened them to the divine. As the bacterial infestation increased, they became more open. The slow-burners all demonstrated behavioral arcs that fit the theory. I guess it sounds crazy, but no one’s come up with anything better.”

She seemed to be waiting for me to speak.

“You’re right,” I said. “That’s out there.”

“Donnell was seeing these peculiar shadows before he died. I think he was seeing people’s souls. I can’t come close to proving it, of course, but there were things he told me…” She sighed in exasperation. “I begged Crain to let me work with Josey my way. I thought if I started from a position of intimacy, we could forge a bond strong enough to endure until the end. We’d see the maturation of the new personality. If my theory’s right, we’d have a captive god fully integrated with a human personality. Whatever a god is. That might be something we could determine. Who knows what’s possible?” The energy drained from her voice and her tone softened. “As things stand I doubt we’ll ever get any further than I got with Donnell. He should have been given the space to evolve, but all they did was harass him.”

“I’m getting you liked this Donnell,” I said.

Her face sharpened. “Yes.”

“How about Pellerin?”

“He’s not very likeable. Part of it is, he’s afraid of everything. Confused. He doesn’t know yet who or what he is. He may never know. So he tends to be angry at everyone. That said, he’s coarse, he’s truculent and difficult to be around.” She made a sad face and pushed up from her throne. “I wish I didn’t have to go, but I should get back to him.”

“Jo?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Remember when you asked if you could count on me as a friend? For what it’s worth…”

“I know,” she said, coming toward me.

“We’ve been forced onto the same side, but…

She embraced me, pulling my head down onto her shoulder. I breathed in her warm, clean smell, and kissed her neck. She tensed, but I nuzzled her neck, her throat, and she let her head fall back. When I kissed her on the mouth, she kissed me back, fully complicit, and, before long, we were rolling around on the bed. I worked her T-shirt up around her neck and had disengaged the catch of her bra, a hook located under a flare of white lace between the cups, when I realized that, although she was not resisting, neither was she helping out as she had a moment earlier. I slid my hand under the bra, but she remained motionless, reactionless, and I asked what was the matter.

“I can’t cope with this. You’re the first man I’ve been attracted to in a long time. A very long time.” She adopted an injured expression, like the one a child might display on running up against a rule that denied it a treat. “I want to make love with you, but I can’t.”

My hand was still on her breast and desire crowded all coherent thought from my head.

“Say something.” She shifted, turning on her side, and my hand was no longer happy.

“Does this have anything to do with Pellerin?”

“Partly.”

“You’re sleeping with him?”

“No, but I might have to. It may be the only way to control him.”

“Is that how you controlled Donnell?”

“It wasn’t like that! I was in love with him.”

“You loved him.”

“I know it sounds strange, but I was…”

I experienced a flash of anger. “It sounds twisted.”

She froze.

“You ever think,” I said, “you might have a kink for dead guys?”

She held my eyes for a second, then sat up, rehooked her bra and tugged down her T-shirt.

“Maybe I do,” she said. “Maybe I find them a vast improvement.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that. I was just…”

“What did you mean?”

“It was frustration talking.”

“Don’t you think I’m frustrated, too? I could probably find an insult to toss at you if I wanted.”

I could have pointed out that she was the cause of her own frustration, but I’d already dug myself a hole and saw no good reason to pull the dirt down on top of me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I truly am.”

“It’s not important,” she said icily. “I’ve heard it before.”

She flung herself off the bed.

“Jo,” I said despairingly.

“Oh,” she said, stopping in the doorway. “I nearly forgot. Your employer has a message for you. He’ll be arriving in three days. Maybe you’ll find his company less perverse than mine.”

I wasn’t accustomed to viewing myself as an employee, and it took me a hiccup to translate the term “your employer” into the name Billy Pitch. I’d been anticipating his arrival, but the news was a shock nonetheless. My dalliance with Jo, brief and unsatisfying as it was, had placed our time on the island in the context of a courtship, and I needed to reorder my priorities. I knew I had to tell Billy everything—he had likely already heard it and our first conversation would be a test of my loyalty—and I would have to put some distance between Jo and me. You might have thought this would be an easy chore, given the state of the relationship, yet I was down the rabbit hole with her, past the point where longing and desire could be disciplined. Even my most self-involved thoughts were tinged with her colors.