Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (29 page)

 
          
But
perhaps, if the boy
believed
would work. . . .

 
          
It
took all three of them about half an hour to clear the room of debris. Colin
had feared that it might not be possible, but Rudbeck seemed to take no notice
of anything except of being touched, and all three of them were careful to
avoid that. By the time they were finished, there wasn't so much as a scrap of
paper left in the room.

 
          
"Now
what?" said Dr. Soule.

 
          
"Now
I'm going to see if I can convince him to stop harming himself. Emptying the
room may buy a little time for that," Colin said, "but make no
mistake: I believe that Rudbeck can be just as dangerous when he doesn't have
something to throw."

 
          
"Do
you want me there, Colin?" Claire asked.

 
          
"I'm
afraid so," Colin said. "I hate to ask you
—
"

 
          
"It's
my job," Claire said firmly, just as Colin had said to her several years
before. "If there's any way I can help, I have to go."

 
          
Colin
nodded, and motioned for Dr. Soule to step back. And then he opened the door to
the room again.

 
          
Jimmy
Rudbeck was still crouched in the corner. His face was sunken in, the skull
beneath the skin showing blatantly. Whatever drug he'd taken should be wearing
off by now, but that was no guarantee that Jimmy Rudbeck would come down.
There were some bad trips that didn't end. His screams were softer now, only a
rusty whistling through his dry throat. He was failing visibly.

 
          
If
only Colin and Claire could manage to reach him, to help him tell the real from
the illusory, that might be enough.

 
          
They
reached the center of the room.

 
          
"James
Rudbeck," Colin said commandingly. "I charge you in the name of the
Living God to hear me."

 
          
No
response.

 
          
"I
order the powers of Darkness to depart from you and to leave you in peace. I
order it in the Name of the Most High, in whose presence Darkness cannot
remain."

 
          
Colin
knelt down in front of Rudbeck and clasped him gently by the shoulders to still
his rocking.

 
          
"Colin,"
Claire said, her voice strained.

 
          
He
felt it, too; the charge of energy that had come just before the room exploded
the last time. But this time there was nothing within reach to throw; only the
force itself. Colin could feel it pressing on his skin like the anticipation of
a storm magnified a thousandfold.

 
          
"The
Light will always defeat the Darkness. You know that this is true."

 
          
He
could feel Claire's presence behind him, but her gift was in a far different
realm than James Rudbeck's, and it could not match Rudbeck's in strength. Colin
felt a painful spark of discharge energy as Claire put her hand on his
shoulder, but he dared not allow himself to be distracted. With all his
strength, he
willed
Rudbeck to believe, to hear him and trust him.

 
          
Even
if he was no longer certain of his own faith.

 
          
Even
if he could not believe that the Light would always triumph over the Darkness.

 
          
The
energy in the room was a painful pressure now, something only instants away
from turning on all three of them.

 
          
"Jimmy,
it's Claire. You have to let go. You have to let us help you. There's I nothing
to be afraid of here. I promise you," she said from behind Colin's
shoulder.

 
          
The
tuneless whispered howling stopped.

 
          
"...
monsters ..." the boy said. His eyes flickered, as if he were trying to I
look away from some inward vista.

 
          
"The
Light will always defeat the Darkness," Colin said firmly. "You know
I that it's true. Remember what you know. Say the prayer, Jimmy. 'The Lord is
my Shepherd, I shall not want
—
'"

 
          
The
boy's eyes flickered once more, then closed. He took a ragged breath.

 
          
'"Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
—
'" Colin I said,
willing Rudbeck to join him. The boy's lips moved along with Colin's I words,
and slowly the storm he had conjured faded away, dissipating like fog I in the
sun.

 
          
'"Surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
—
'"

 
          
And
James Rudbeck slumped forward into Colin's arms in boneless un- '
consciousness.

 
          
Half
an hour later there was no sign
—
save the emptiness of the room
—
that  j anything had
ever happened there. An ambulance had come to take Rudbeck to the hospital for
further treatment, and there was every likelihood that he J would remember
nothing of what had happened
—
or at any rate, little   I enough beyond a
resolution not to experiment again with recreational drugs.

 
          
As
they watched the ambulance pull away, Claire turned to him suddenly with the
air of someone who has remembered something.

 
          
"Colin?
What happened at the hearing?"

 
          
The
hearing. The disciplinary hearing precipitated by his so-called radicalism.
The trip to
England
and all that had come of it
had driven the uni- I versity problems completely out of his mind, and somehow
now, after all that I had happened, he could not manage to still think of it as
very important.   I Colin shook his head.

 
          
"I'm
afraid they had to proceed without me. No doubt I'll be notified of I their
decision in their own good time," he answered.

           
But apparently the hearing had been
more significant than Colin had thought, and his absence from it had created an
unfavorable impression, especially when no explanation of his absence was
forthcoming upon his return. An emergency, Colin had said to the colleagues he
had gotten to take his classes, and when he returned, he left it at that.

 
          
But
in the next several days following his return, Colin was summoned to meetings
with the head of the Psychology Department, the dean of faculty, the dean of
students, and even the president of the university. The message in each of
these meetings was the same: drop the parapsychology courses, toe the party line,
conform, submit, agree. . . .

 
          
And
Colin found himself unable to do it.

 
          
More
to the point, he didn't
wish
to do what they so plainly wanted him to.
After what he had learned in London, their concerns seemed petty, somehow;
fools dancing on the edge of the Abyss, unaware of the peril they were in, in a
world where the sacred cause of human freedom was guttering on the edge of
extinction.

 
          
He
was not, himself, certain of what to do. That power corrupted had always been
tacitly understood of those who chose public life, but sheltering and
exploiting war criminals went far beyond simple nepotism or self-enrichment. It
was betrayal on a cosmic scale, the nihilistic worship of the great god
Expediency, reducing the victors to the same moral level as those they had
defeated. It was like some horror movie come to life, where friends and allies
were transformed into inhuman monsters . . . and no one knew until it was too
late.

 
          
Simon
had been right. Thorne had been right. Everyone had been right. The United
States government
—
or some powerful faction of it
—
was so unspeakably corrupt
that it was feeding upon itself in a cannibalistic orgy, destroying the very
ideals it had been created to protect.

 
          
As
much as they served the Darkness, Colin was sworn to oppose them, but what
could one man do against the inertia of the government? Some of the children he
taught preached revolution, but Colin knew from bitter experience that a
revolution would not save them. It would only produce the chaos that would
allow a dictatorship to take explicit control.

 
          
Colin
thought briefly of Thorne, and the people Thorne called his sacred clowns.
Could turning the streets into a circus actually be what was needed? Or was
what was needed, as it had always been, no harder
—
and no easier
—
than men of good will
keeping faith?

 
          
He
could not
know.
Ultimate certainty was reserved to the Light Itself, not
to mortal, fallible men. Colin could only
hope,
and act in accordance
with his own conscience.

 
          
He
thought again of James Rudbeck, trapped and terrified by the unleashed power
of his own mind. Of Claire as he had first known her, hostile and tormented by
a gift for whose existence there was no room in the conventional worldview.

 
          
These
were his people. These were the ones he must find, and reach, and teach. Each
soul he could save from fear was a blow against the Darkness. This was his new
war, and now he must find the field on which it was to be fought. And he had
been his own master for far too long to continue to devote half his life to
something he couldn't respect.

 
          
"I
have to say that I'm delighted to see you here, Dr. MacLaren," the man behind
the desk said.

 
          
The
Rhodes Group had spacious offices on the fifteenth floor of one of the
anonymous new office buildings that had begun to infest the financial district
of San Francisco. Anyone entering the foyer would be forgiven for believing
that this, too, was some high-level think tank, or perhaps an international financial
firm, teak office suite and English-accented receptionist included. And, in a
manner of speaking, this
was
a research organization.

 
          
The
Rhodes Group was a for-profit foundation dedicated to study and investigation
of the paranormal in all its guises. It investigated mediums and haunted
houses, tested self-proclaimed psychics, and correlated reports from all over
the world about advances in the field of parapsychology. Its research library
was internationally famous and it held a contract as a government consultant in
the field of the paranormal, but the majority of the group's support came from
the individuals and organizations to whom it provided its services, those
individuals whose lives had somehow been touched by the uncanny, and who now
needed expert counsel.

 
          
"I'm
delighted to be here, Mr. Davenant," Colin responded.

 
          
"Please.
Call me Michael," Michael Davenant responded. He was a few years younger
than Colin, with the darkly brilliant good looks that were a hallmark of his
Irish ancestry.

 
          
Behind
him, through the wall of glass that formed the outside wall of the office,
Colin could see the entire sweep of the City spread out before him like the
proverbial land of dreams. It was a sunny, late spring day, the start of the
long rainless stretch that made up three seasons of the
California
year.

 
          
"And
I'm Colin."

 
          
Davenant
smiled. "Colin, then. As you've probably guessed, the reason I've asked
you back here today is to offer you the position. It would be a great asset to
us to have a field researcher with your reputation working with the group, and
frankly, I deem it lucky that you're willing to consider us. The board was
favorably impressed with your CV . . . and fully sympathizes with your decision
to leave
Berkeley
."