Killing Time

CHAPTER 33

Malcolm's return to consciousness had nothing to do with any efforts of mine, for I had not even begun to administer resuscitating measures when his entire body jerked upward as if it had received a strong electric shock. His lungs took in a huge gulp of air and he began to cough hard, though it didn't seem that the noise was loud or distinct enough to attract the attention of our observers. I poured a glass of water from a pewter jug and got him to swallow some of it, and once his breathing had returned to something like normal he whispered:

"How long was I gone?"

"I don't know," I answered. "I found you on the floor." I raised my eyebrows in question. "You had no pulse, Malcolm."

He drank a little more water and nodded. "Yes," he breathed. "It happens — more often these days, actually." Lying back, he tried to calm his body. "One of the more unpredictable symptoms of my condition — spontaneous shutdown of the most basic functions. But it never lasts long." He looked at the wooden ceiling of his bed in seemingly casual frustration. "I wish I could remember whether or not I dream while it's happening…"

"Have you determined what triggers it?" I asked, slightly amazed by his attitude. "Does exhaustion play a part?"

He shrugged. "Quite probably. However…" He rolled over and looked outside, frowning when he saw the drones. "Still there, eh? Well, exhausted or not, I've got to get back to Eli—"

But the man couldn't even sit up straight. "You're not going anywhere just now," I said; and as he reached for his transdermal injector I took it away from him. "And I don't think self-medication following a neuroparalytic crisis of some kind is really called for, either."

Ever since our first encounter I had recognized that Malcolm's pride was more important to him than almost anything: he desperately needed to feel that he wasn't helpless and would go to almost inhuman lengths to avoid that impression. Thus I wasn't at all sure how he would react to the doctorly dictates I was issuing. But surprisingly, he did no more than glance at me with an expression of acceptance, rather like that of a boy who's been told he has to stay home from school. "All right," he said calmly. "But I'll need my chair." He actually seemed somewhat relieved at the prospect of being forced to rest for a bit, though I knew he would never admit it; so I simply nodded and maneuvered the wheelchair over to his bed, letting him get into it himself. "Thank you, Gideon," he said, as if in reply to my not assisting him.

"Just be thankful that your sister worries about you," I said. "God knows how long you might've stayed on that floor if she hadn't asked me to come down. Or what shape you would've been in when we finally did find you."

He acknowledged the statement by holding up a hand. Then, after a moment's pause, he looked at me with evident curiosity. "You and Larissa — you care for each other very deeply, it seems." Assuming that he was still groggy, I smiled in a cajoling way. "What's it like?" he asked.

I had anticipated Malcolm's eventually asking many questions about my relationship with his sister, but this was not one of them. His disorientation, I determined, must have been greater than I'd originally estimated. "You mean — what's it like to be in love with your sister?" I said.

"To be in love with any woman," Malcolm said. "And to have her love you — what's that like?"

As he was speaking, I realized from the clarity of both his gaze and his words that my supposition had been wrong — that, though weakened, he wasn't disoriented at all — and this realization fell like a stone on my spirit. Among the many things of which Stephen Tressalian had robbed his son, this seemed to me the most valuable and shocking. It was unspeakably cruel that Malcolm should not have known the answer to his own question; yet the obviousness of why he did not was crueler still. Desperately searching for an answer that would not betray my own sense of sorrow, I finally said, "Larissa is a far cry from 'any woman.' "

Malcolm pondered the statement. "Do you know that?" he eventually asked. "Empirically, I mean."

"I think so," I answered. "At any rate, I believe it. That's what's important."

"Yes," he said, touching his mouth pensively with his fingers. "That is the important thing, isn't it? Belief…" We sat there without saying another word for about a minute, as air wheezed noisily into and out of Malcolm's lungs. Then he repeated the word: "Belief… I haven't studied it enough, Gideon. I've focused on deception — the deceptions of this age and my own attempts to reveal them through deception. But I should have paid more attention to belief — because it's what's put us in this predicament." He seemed to be gaining strength, though I got the impression that it was more the chance to talk about what had been bothering him than any genuine physical improvement that was behind his surge in energy. "What is it, Gideon? What makes a man like Dov Eshkol so committed to his beliefs that he's capable of committing any kind of crime?"

Given the palliative effect that the conversation was having on him, I kept up my end; and there, in the bizarre, threatening quiet of the slow-moving ship, surrounded and constantly scrutinized by the mechanized minions of our enemies below, we began to pick away at the mind of the man we were hunting.

"There are a lot of factors involved in that kind of belief, of course," I said. "But if I had to pick one as paramount, I'd say it was fear."

"Fear?" Malcolm repeated. "Fear of what? God?"

I shook my head. "The kinds of fear I'm talking about strike long before we encounter any concept of God. From the day we're born, there are two basic terrors that consume all people, whatever their background. The first is terror prompted by a sense of our true aloneness, our isolation from one another. The second, of course, is the fear of death. No matter how in particular, these fears touch each of our lives and are at least partly responsible for all crimes— including the types that Eshkol has committed."

I paused and studied Malcolm for a few seconds: he was nodding his head and seemed to be growing calmer by the moment, even though his blue eyes stayed locked on the drones outside. "Go on," he said after a half minute or so. "We've got to know how his mind works."

"All right," I replied, "but only if you can stay calm about it." He waved a hand a bit impatiently, a good sign that he was, indeed, feeling better. "Well," I continued, "most people try to submerge the first of these fears — the terror of isolation — in a sense of identification within a group. Religious, political, ethnic, it doesn't really matter — it's even behind most of the mass marketing that's done today and behind popular culture itself. Anything, as long as it seems to break down the wall of alienation and impart a sense of belonging."

"Which creates," Malcolm murmured, his eyes going self-consciously wide, "enormous opportunities for manipulation."

"And manipulators," I agreed. "Otherwise known as leaders. Most of them are simply people who are trying to assuage their own fears by creating a rubric of identity into which the greatest number of souls, differing in everything except their feeling of being disconnected and lost, can fit."

"Are we talking about Eshkol's superiors here?"

"In part, but not primarily. His Israeli commanders do fall into the category we've been discussing so far, the fairly common variety of leaders that includes almost anyone involved in a political, religious, economic, or cultural movement. But Eshkol? There's nothing common about him, and if we want to understand how he works, we have to take the whole business to the next level."

Malcolm sighed. "Fanaticism," he said, with the same loathing he'd displayed earlier.

"Yes. The common leader and his followers work mainly off of the desire to end isolation, but the fanatical leader and his disciples incorporate the second primal fear, the fear of death, into the equation. And by death I mean annihilation — the utter obliteration of any and every bit of a person's earthly existence and legacy. The leader who promises his people that adherence to his laws and teachings will not only relieve the pain of their isolation but also allow them to defy death, to achieve some kind of spiritual immortality through worthy deeds, that type of leader achieves a supreme control that the first type can't match — and creates an entirely different kind of follower in the process. Such a follower is likely to disregard most generally accepted rules of social behavior for the simple reason that to him or her, there is no obscenity save what the leader labels obscene. And such a leader's definition of obscene is likely to be very specific, because he doesn't want to limit the range of possible actions to which he can order his followers."

"All right," Malcolm agreed, his fingers beginning to tap on the arms of his chair. "But who is it, then? Who's the leader who's telling Eshkol what to do?"

"I don't think anyone's telling him, in the way that you mean. But he does have leaders — the worst kind. You said it yourself, Malcolm, when we first found out about him — it's his family, specifically the victims who died almost a century ago."

Malcolm looked momentarily confused. "But — they're dead. And they weren't leaders."

"Not in the obvious way," I said. "And that makes them even more dangerous. They embody all the virtues of Eshkol's ethnic and religious heritage — in fact, being so long dead, they have no flaws of any kind. They demand, in his mind, unquestioning faith — and complete vengeance, to be achieved with the same brutality that caused their deaths. They offer him the promise of welcoming arms, of eternal community, should he die as a result of his efforts. And most of all, the viciousness he embodies, the viciousness that's inherent in all fanaticism, takes on the gender trappings of love because it serves their memory. Eshkol's the consummate lone wolf, and even the Israelis know it — he answers to only one voice, the collective voice he imagines to be coming from his murdered ancestors."

"And so," Malcolm said, taking up the train of thought, "when he saw the Stalin images he never questioned them."

I nodded. "By now Eshkol is almost certainly paranoid. He's had enough time to obsess over an unequaled cataclysm, to link it to events in his own family and personal life and decide that it's ongoing and requires an active response from him personally. Based on his activities, it's safe to say that he suspects the entire world is involved in a plot to exterminate Jews — indeed, Jews themselves, at least some Jews, are apparently not above suspicion in his mind. Paranoia creates fantastic tension, which can never be relieved through disproof — only through vindication. So when he saw the Stalin images, he saw exactly what he'd always wanted to see — proof that he was right and that all his actions had been justified."

Still staring at the drones, Malcolm began to murmur, "Mundus vult…" But the statement seemed to give him no satisfaction now, and he finally sat back, letting out a long breath. "Good Lord, Gideon…"

"I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know — or suspect. What bothers me now is, how can we possibly hope to catch him? If I'm right — if he in fact answers to no one living and if he can move through modern society like a phantom — then where's our advantage?"

Malcolm balled his hands into fists, but he kept his voice low. "Our advantage is ourselves. It's up to us. No one else can get to him before—"

Malcolm apparently didn't want to finish the thought; but I, wishing to be absolutely sure that we did indeed understand both each other and the situation, looked at him and said, " 'Before…'?"

A sudden flurry of movement outside the window distracted us both: in loose formation the drones began to move away from our ship and head back in the direction from which they'd come. Though immensely relieved, I was initially at a loss as to why it was happening. But then I heard Eli's voice coming over the address system:

"It's all right — I've initiated the new signature, they don't have anything to lock onto anymore. We should be safe."

Malcolm turned and touched a keypad by his bed. "Well done, Eli. Julien — let's get back up to speed. I want to be over France within the hour." Putting his hands on the wheels of his chair, Malcolm gave me one more critical look. "I think we both have a very good idea of what we need to get to Eshkol 'before,' Gideon — and I suggest that, however horrifying it seems, we both try to impress that idea on the others." He turned his chair around and headed for the door. "This man's mind may be full of vengeful fantasies, as you say — but they will die with him."