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A Darkness in my Soulby Dean R. KoontzVersion 1.0A #bw releaseONEDivinity Destroyed...IFor a long while, I wondered if Dragonfly was still inthe heavens and whether the Spheres of Plague still floatedin airlessness, blind eyes watchful. I wondered whethermen still looked to the stars with trepidation and whetherthe skies yet bore the cancerous seed of mankind. Therewas no way for me to find out, for I lived in Hell duringthose days, where news of the living gained precious littlecirculation.I was a digger into minds, a head-tripper. I esped. Ifound secrets, knew lies, and reported all these things fora price. I esped. Some questions were never meant to beanswered; some parts of a man's mind were never intend-ed for scrutiny. Yet our curiosity is, at the same time, ourgreatest virtue and our most serious weakness. I hadwithin my mind the power to satisfy any curiosity whichtickled me. I esped; I found; I knew. And then there wasa darkness in my soul, darkness unmatched by the depthsof space that lay lightless between the galaxies, an ebonyache without parallel.It started with a nerve-jangling ring of the telephone, amundane enough beginning.I put down the book I was reading and lifted thereceiver and said, impatiently perhaps, "Hello?""Simeon?" the distant voice asked. He pronounced itcorrectly?Sim-ee-on.It was Harry Kelly, sounding bedraggled and bewil-dered, two things he never was. I recognized his voicebecause it had been?in years past?the only sound ofsanity and understanding in a world of wildly gabblingself-seekers and power-mongers. I esped out and saw himstanding in a room that was strange to me, nervouslydrumming his fingers on the top of a simulated oak desk.The desk was studded with a complex panel of controls,three telephones, and three-dimensional television screensfor monitoring interoffice activity?the work space ofsomeone of more than a little importance."What is it, Harry?""Sim, I have another job for you. If you want it, that is.You don't have to take it if you're already wrapped up insomething private."He had long ago given up his legal practice to act as myagent, and he could be counted on for at least one call aweek like this. Yet there was a hollow anxiety in his tonewhich made me uncomfortable. I could have toucheddeeper into his mind, stirred through the pudding of histhoughts and discovered the trouble. But he was the oneperson in the world I would not esp for purely personalreasons. He had earned his sanctity, and he would neverhave to worry about losing it."Why so nervous? What kind of job?""Plenty of money," he said. "Look, Sim, I know howmuch you hate these tawdry little government contracts. Ifyou take this job, you're not going to need money for along while. You won't have to go around snoopingthrough a hundred government heads a week.""Say no more," I said. Harry knew my habit of livingbeyond my means. If he thought there was enough in thisto keep me living fat for some time to come, the buyerhad just purchased his merchandise. All of us have ourprice. Mine just came a little steeper than most."I'm at the Artificial Creation complex. We'll expectyou in?say twenty minutes.""I'm on my way." I dropped the phone into its cradleand tried to pretend I was enthusiastic. But my stomachbelied my true feelings as it stung my chest with acidic,roiling spasms. In the back of my mind, The Fear roseand hung over me, watching with dinner-plate eyes,breathing fire through black nostrils. The ArtificialCreation building: the womb, my womb, the first tides ofmy life....I almost crawled back into bed and almost said the hellwith it. The AC complex was the last place on Earth Iwanted to go, especially at night, when everything wouldseem more sinister, when memories would play in brightercolors. Two things kept me from the sheets: I truly didnot enjoy the loyalty checks I ran on government employ-ees to keep me in spending money, for I was not onlyrequired to report traitors, but to delineate the abnormal(as the government defined that) private practices andbeliefs of those I scanned, violating privacy in the mostinsidious of fashions; secondly, I had just promised HarryI would be there, and I couldn't find a single instance whenthat mad Irishman had ever let me down.I cursed the womb which had made me, beseeching thegods to melt its plastic walls and short-circuit those milesand miles of delicate copper wires.I pulled on street clothes over pajamas, stepped intoovershoes and a heavy coat with fur lining, one of thepopular Nordic models. Without Harry Kelly, I wouldmost likely have been in prison at that moment?or in apreventive detention apartment with federal plainclothesguards standing watch at the doors and windows. Which isonly a more civilized way of saying the same thing: prison.When the staff of Artificial Creation discovered my wildtalents in my childhood, the FBI attempted to "impound"me so that I might be used as a "national resource" underfederal control for "the betterment of our great country andthe establishment of a tighter American defense perimeter."It had been Harry Kelly who had cut through all that fancylanguage to call it what it was?illegal and immoral im-prisonment of a free citizen. He fought the legal battle allthe way to nine old men in nine old chairs, where the casewas won. I was nine when we did that?twelve long yearsago.It was snowing outside. The harsh lines of shrubbery,trees, and curbs had been softened by three inches ofwhite. I had to scrape the windscreen of the hovercar,which amused me and helped settle my nerves a bit. Onewould imagine that, in 2004 A.D., Science could havedreamed up something to make ice scrapers obsolete.At the first red light, there was a gray police howleroverturned on the sidewalk, like a beached whale. Itsstubby nose had smashed through the display window of asmall clothing store, and the dome light was still swiveling.A thin trail of exhaust fumes rose from the bent tailpipe,curled upwards into the cold air. There were more thantwenty uniformed coppers positioned around the intersec-tion, though there seemed to be no present danger. Thesnow was tramped and scuffed, as if there had been amajor conflagration, though the antagonists had disap-peared. I was motioned through by a stern-faced bull in afur-collared fatigue jacket, and I obeyed. None of themlooked in the mood to satisfy the curiosity of a passingmotorist, or even to let me pause long enough to scan theirminds and find the answer without their knowledge.I arrived at the AC building and floated the car in for aMarine attendant to park. As I slid out and he slid in, Iasked, "Know anything about the howler on Seventh?Turned on its side and driven halfway into a store. Lot ofcoppers."He was a huge man with a blocky head and flatfeatures that looked almost painted on. When he wrinkledhis face in disgust, it looked as if someone had put aneggbeater on his nose and whirled everything together."Peace criers," he said.I couldn't see why he should bother lying to me, so Ididn't go through the bother of using my esp, whichrequires some expenditure of energy. "I thought they werefinished," I said."So did everyone else," he said. Quite obviously, hehated the peace criers, as did most men in uniform. "TheCongressional investigating committee proved the volun-tary army was still a good idea. We don't run the countrylike those creeps say. Brother, I can sure tell you wedon't!" Then he slammed the door and took the car awayto park it while I punched for the elevator, steppedthrough its open maw, and went up.I made faces at the cameras which watched me, andrepeated two dirty limericks on the way to the lobby.When the lift stopped and the doors opened, a secondMarine greeted me, requested that I hold my fingertips toan identiplate to verify his visual check. I complied, wasapproved, and followed him to another elevator in thelong bank. Again: up.Too many floors to count later, we stepped into acream-walled corridor, paced almost to the end of it, andwent through a chocolate door that slid aside at theofficer's vocal command. Inside, there was a room ofalabaster walls with hex signs painted every five feet inbrilliant reds and oranges. There was a small and uglychild sitting in a black leather chair, and four men stand-ing behind him, staring at me as if I were expected to saysomething of monumental importance.I didn't say anything at all.The child looked up, his eyes and lips all but hidden bythe wrinkles of a century of life, by gray and gravelikeflesh. I tried to readjust my judgment, tried to visualizehim as a grandfather. But it was not so. He was a child.There was the glint of babyhood close behind that ruinedcountenance. His voice crackled like papyrus unrolled forthe first time in millennia, and he gripped the chair as thewords came, and he squinted his already squinted eyes,and he said, "You're the one." It was an accusation."You're the one they sent for."For the first time in many years, I was afraid. I was notcertain what terrified me, but it was a deep and relentlessuneasiness, far more threatening than The Fear which rosein me most nights when I considered my origins and thepocket of the plastic womb from which I came."You," the child said again."Who is he?" I asked the assembled military men.No one spoke immediately. As if they wanted to be surethe freak in the chair was finished.He w... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]