Page 156

"`By accident it started,' he said coolly, forbiddingly, with the clear implication that the question was absurd. 'Four thousand years ago, by accident, and it has been enclosed in magic and religion ever since. '

"'You are telling me the truth, aren't you?'

"'Why shouldn't I? Why should I protect you from the truth? Why should I bother to lie to you? I don't even know who you are. I don't care. '

"`Then will you explain to me what you mean, that it happened by accident,' I pressed.

"'I don't know. I may. I may not. I have spoken more in these last few moments than I have in years. The story of the accident may be no more true than the myths that delight the others. The others have always chosen the myths. It's what you really want, is it not?' His voice rose and he rose slightly out of the chair as if his angry voice were impelling him to his feet.

"`A story of our creation, analogous to the Genesis of the Hebrews, the tales in Homer, the babblings of your Roman poets Ovid and Virgil -- a great gleaming morass of symbols out of which life itself is supposed to have sprung. ' He was on his feet and all but shouting, his black forehead knotted with veins, his hand a fist on the desk. 'It is that kind of tale that fills the documents in these rooms, that emerges in fragments from the anthems and the incantations. Want to hear it? It's as true as anything else. '

"`Tell me what you will,' I said. I was trying to keep calm. The volume of his voice was hurting my ears. And I heard things stirring in the rooms near us. Other creatures, like that dried-up wisp of a thing that had brought me in here, were prowling about.

"`And you might begin,' I said acidly, 'by confessing why you came to me in my rooms here in Alexandria. It was you who led me here. Why did you do that? To rail at me? To curse me for asking you how it started?'

"'Quiet yourself. '

"'I might say the same to you. '

"He looked me up and down calmly, and then he smiled. He opened both his hands as if in greeting or offering, and then he shrugged.

"'I want you to tell me about the accident,' I said. 'I would beg you to tell me if I thought it would do any good. What can I do for you to make you tell?'

"His face underwent several remarkable transformations. I could feel his thoughts, but not hear them, feel a high-pitched humor. And when he spoke again, his voice was thickened as if he were fighting back sorrow, as if it were strangling him.

"'Hearken to our old story,' he said. 'The good god, Osiris, the first pharaoh of Egypt, in the eons before the invention of writing, was murdered by evil men. And when his wife, Isis, gathered together the parts of his body, he became immortal and thereafter ruled in the realm of the dead. This is the realm of the moon, and the night, in which he reigned, and to him were brought the blood sacrifices for the great goddess which he drank. But the priests tried to steal from him the secret of his immortality, and so his worship became secret, and his temples were known only to those of his cult who protected him from the sun god, who might at any time seek to destroy Osiris with the sun's burning rays. But you can see the truth in the legend. The early king discovered something -- or rather he was the victim of an ugly occurrence -- and he became unnatural with a power that could be used for incalculable evil by those around him, and so he made a worship of it, seeking to contain it in obligation and ceremony, seeking to limit The Powerful Blood to those who would use it for white magic and nothing else. And so here we are. '

"'And the Mother and Father are Isis and Osiris?'

"`Yes and no. They are the first two. Isis and Osiris are

the names that were used in the myths that they told, or the old worship onto which they grafted themselves. '

"`What was the accident, then? How was this thing discovered?'

"He looked at me for a long period of silence, and then he sat down again, turning to the side and staring off as he'd been before.

"`But why should I tell you?' he asked, yet this time he put the question with new feeling, as though he meant it sincerely and had to answer it for himself. 'Why should I do anything? If the Mother and the Father will not rise from the sands to save themselves as the sun comes over the horizon, why should I move? Or speak? Or go on?' Again he looked up at me.

"'This is what happened, the Mother and the Father went out into the sun?'

"`Were left in the sun, my dear Marius,' he said, astonishing me with the knowledge of my name. 'Left in the sun. The Mother and the Father do not move of their own volition, save now and then to whisper to each other, to knock those of us down who would come to them for their healing blood. They could restore all of us who were burned, if they would let us drink the healing blood. Four thousand years the Father and Mother have existed, and our blood grows stronger with every season, every victim. It grows stronger even with starvation, for when the starvation is ended, new strength is enjoyed. But the Father and the Mother do not care for their children. And now it seems they do not care for themselves. Maybe after four thousand nights, they merely wished to see the sun!

"`Since the coming of the Greek into Egypt, since the perversion of the old art, they have not spoken to us. They have not let us see the blink of their eye. And what is Egypt now but the granary of Rome? When the Mother and the Father strike out to drive us away from the veins in their necks, they are as iron and can crush our bones. And if they do not care anymore, then why should I?'

"I studied him for a long moment.

"'And you are saying,' I asked,'that this is what caused the others to burn up? That the Father and Mother were left out in the sun?'

"He nodded.

"`Our blood comes from them!' he said. 'It is their blood. The line is direct, and what befalls them befalls us. If they are burnt, we are burnt. '

"`We are connected to them!' I whispered in amazement.

"'Exactly, my dear Marius,' he said, watching me, seeming to enjoy my fear. 'That is why they have been kept for a thousand years, the Mother and the Father, that is why victims are brought to them in sacrifice, that is why they are worshiped. What happens to them happens to us. '

"`Who did it? Who put them in the sun?'