there's no doubt of it. And the story has a way of calling me back."
He sighed.
"I don't know much life in death without pain," he said. "But that I deserve, I imagine, being a demon of might. The last Master I obeyed was a Jew in the city of Strasbourg and they burned all the Jews there because they blamed them for the Black Death." "Ah," I said. "That must have been the fourteenth century."
"The year 1349 of the current era," he said with a smile. "I looked it up. They killed the Jews then all over Europe, blaming them for the Black Death."
"I know. Yes, and there have been many holocausts since." "Do you know what Gregory told me? Our beloved Gregory
Belkin? When he thought he was my master and that I would help him?"
"I can't guess."
"He told me that if the Black Death had not come to Europe, Europe would be a desert today. He said that the population had grown rampant; that the trees were being cut down so fast that the entire forests of old Europe were gone by that time. And the forests of Europe we know now date back to the fourteenth century."
"That's true," I said. "I think. Is that how he justified the murder of people?"
"Oh, that was one of just many ways. Gregory was an extraordinary man, really, because he was an honest man."
"Not mad, to found this worldwide temple and fill it with terrorists?"
"No " he shook his head. "Just ruthless and honest. He said to me the point that there was one man who had utterly changed the history of the world. I thought he would say that that man was Christ or Fyrus the Persian. Or perhaps Mohammed. But he said no. The man who changed the entire world was Alexander the Great. That was his model. Gregory was perfectly sane. He intended to break a giant Gordian knot. He almost succeeded. Almost-"
"How did you stop him? How did it all come about?" "A fatal flaw in him stopped him," he said. "Do you know in the old Persian religion, one legend is that evil came into the world not through sin, or through God, but through a mistake. A ritual mistake?"
"I've heard of it. You're talking of very old myths, fragments of Zoroastrianism."
"Yes," he said, "myths the Medians gave to the Persians and the Persians passed on to the Jews. Not disobedience. Bad judgment. It's almost that way in Genesis, wouldn't you say? Eve makes a mistake in judgment. A ritual rule is broken. That must be different from sin, don't you think?"
"I don't know. If I knew that, I would be a happier man."
He laughed. "What undid Gregory was a flaw in judgment," he said.
"How?" "He counted on my vanity being as great as his. Or maybe he just misjudged my power, my willingness to intervene . . . No, he thought I would be swept up with his notions; he thought they were irresistible. It was an error in judgment. Had he not told me things, key things right at the appropriate moment, even I could not have stopped his plan. But he had to tell, to boast, to be recognized by me, and to be loved ... I think, even be loved by me."
"Did he know what you were? The Servant of the Bones? A spirit?"
Oh, yes, we came together without any question of credibility, as you would say today. But I'll get to that."
He sat back. I checked the tape recorders. I removed the small cassettes and replaced them with fresh cassettes, and then made markings on the labels so that I wouldn't confuse myself. I laid both machines back on the hearth.
He was watching me with keen interest and an agreeable look.
Yet he seemed reluctant to begin, or to be finding it difficult, yet yearning to do it.
"Did Cyrus the Persian keep his word to you?" I asked. I had been thinking of this on and off since we'd broken off. "Did he actually send you to Miletus? I find it hard to believe that Cyrus the Persian would keep his word-"
"You do?" He looked at me and smiled. "But he kept his word to Israel, as you know. The Jews were allowed to leave Babylon and they went home and they made the Kingdom once again of Judea and they built the Temple of Solomon. You know all this from history. Cyrus kept his word to his conquered peoples and particularly