The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,542

fool you. Look at the history. He makes too many mistakes. And you have your love to bargain with. Bargain with your will. Besides, why should he kill me? What can I do to him? Persuade you not to help him? Your moral sense is stronger and finer even than mine.”

“What in the world would make you think that?” she said. “What moral sense?” It struck her that she was near to collapse, that she had to get out of here, and go home where she could sleep. But he was there, waiting for her. He would be anywhere she went. And she’d come here for a reason—to warn Aaron. To give Aaron a last chance.

But it would be so nice to go home, to sleep again, if only she didn’t hear that baby crying. She could feel Lasher wrapping his countless arms around her, snuggling her up in airy warmth.

“Rowan, listen to me.”

She waked as if from a dream.

“All over the world there are human beings with exceptional powers,” Aaron was saying, “but you are one of the rarest because you have found a way to use your power for good. You don’t gaze into a crystal ball for dollar bills, Rowan. You heal. Can you bring him into that with you? Or will he take you away from it forever? Will he draw your power off into the creation of some mutant monster that the world does not want and cannot abide? Destroy him, Rowan. For your own sake. Not for mine. Destroy him for what you know is right.”

“This is why he’ll kill you, Aaron. I can’t stop him if you provoke him. But why is it so wrong? Why are you against it? Why did you lie to me?”

“I never lied. And you know why it mustn’t happen. He would be a thing without a human soul.”

“That’s religion, Aaron.”

“Rowan, he would be unnatural. We need no more monsters. We ourselves are monstrous enough.”

“He is as natural as we are,” she said. “This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“He is as alien from us as a giant insect, Rowan. Would you make such a thing as that? It isn’t meant to happen.”

“Meant. Is mutation meant? Every second of every minute of every day, cells are mutating.”

“Within limits. Upon a predictable path. A cat cannot fly. A man cannot grow horns. There is a scheme to things, and we can spend our lives studying it and marveling at it, that it is such a magnificent scheme. He is not part of the scheme.”

“So you say, but what if there is no scheme? What if there is just process, just cells multiplying, and his metamorphosis is as natural as a river changing course and devouring farmland and houses and cattle and people? As a comet crashing into the earth?”

“Would you not try to save human beings from drowning? Would you not try to save them from the comet’s fire? All right. Say he is natural. Let us postulate that we are better than natural. We aim for more than mere process. Our morals, our compassion, our capacity to love and to create an orderly society, make us better than nature. He has no reverence for that, Rowan. Look what he has done to the Mayfair family.”

“He created it, Aaron!”

“No, I can’t accept that. I can’t.”

“You’re still talking religion, Aaron. You’re talking an obdurate morality. There is no secure logical ground for condemning him.”

“But there is. There has to be. Pestilence is natural, but you wouldn’t let the bacillus out of the tube to destroy millions. Rowan, for the love of God, our consciousness was educated by the flesh from which it evolved. What would we be without the capacity to feel physical pain? And this creature, Lasher, has never bled from the smallest wound. He’s never been chastened by hunger or sharpened by the need to survive. He is an immoral intelligence, Rowan, and you know this. You know it. And that is what I call unnatural, for want of a better word.”

“Pretty moral poetry,” she said. “You disappoint me. I was hoping you would give me arguments in exchange for my warning. I was hoping you would fortify my soul.”

“You don’t need my arguments. Look into your own soul. You know what I’m trying to tell you. He’s a laser beam with ambition. He’s a bomb that can think for itself. Let him in and the world will pay for it. You will be the mother