his cue from the other riders young and old, he rode the bike like a demon through the streets.
Still Yuri wouldn’t talk. Then, after constant prodding, he told the story of the maharaja.
“No. Tell me what really happened,” asked Aaron.
“Why should I tell you anything?” Yuri demanded. “I don’t know why I came here with you.” It had been a year since he had spoken real truth about himself to anyone. He had not even told Andrew the real truth. Why tell this man? And suddenly, denying that he had any need of telling the truth, or confiding, or explaining, he began to do both. He told all about his mother, about the gypsies, about everything…He talked and talked. The night wore on and became the morning, and still Aaron Lightner sat across from him at the table listening, and Yuri talked and talked and talked.
And when he finished he knew Aaron Lightner and Aaron Lightner knew him. It was decided that Yuri would not leave the Talamasca, at least not right then.
For six years, Yuri went to school in Amsterdam.
He lived in the Talamasca house, spent most of his time on his studies, and worked after school and on weekends for Aaron Lightner, entering records into the computer, looking up obscure references in the library, sometimes merely running errands—deliver this to the post office, pick up this important box.
He came to realize that the Elders were in fact all around him, rank and file members of the Order, but nobody knew who they were. It worked like this. Once you became an Elder, you didn’t tell anybody that you were. And it was forbidden to ask a person, “Are you an Elder?” or, “Do you know whether or not Aaron is an Elder?” It was forbidden to speculate on such matters in one’s mind.
The Elders knew who the Elders were. The Elders communicated with everyone via the computers and the fax machines in the Motherhouse. Indeed, any member, even an unofficial member like Yuri, could talk to the Elders whenever he chose. In the dead of night, he could boot up his computer, write a long letter to the Elders, and sometime later that very morning an answer would come to him through the computer printer, flowing out page after page.
This meant of course that there were many Elders, and that some of them were always “on call.” The Elders had no real personality as far as Yuri could detect, no real voice in their communications, except that they were kindly and attentive and they knew everything, and often they revealed that they knew all about Yuri, maybe even about things of which he himself was unsure.
It fascinated Yuri, this silent communication with the Elders. He began to ask them about many things. They never failed to answer.
In the morning, when Yuri went down to breakfast in the refectory, he looked around him and wondered who was an Elder, who here in this room had answered his letter this very night. Of course, his communication might have gone to Rome, for all he knew. Indeed, Elders were everywhere in every Motherhouse, and all you knew was that they were the old ones, the experienced ones, the ones who really ran the Order, though the Superior General, appointed by them, and answerable only to them, was the official head.
When Aaron relocated to London, it was a sad day for Yuri, because the house in Amsterdam had been his only permanent home. But he would not be separated from Aaron, and so they left the Amsterdam Motherhouse together, and went to live in the big house outside London which was also beautiful and warm and safe.
Yuri came to love London. When he learnt that he was to go to school at Oxford, he was delighted by this decision, and he spent six years there, corning home often on weekends, wallowing as it were in the life of the mind.
By the age of twenty-six, Yuri was ready to become a serious member of the Order. There was not the slightest doubt in his mind. He welcomed the travel assignments given him by Aaron and David. Soon he was receiving travel instructions directly from the Elders. And he was making out his reports to them on the computer when he returned.
“Assignment from the Elders,” he would say to Aaron on leaving. Aaron never questioned it. And never seemed particularly surprised.
Always, wherever he went and whatever he did, Yuri talked on the phone long