was a pause and very gently Laura spoke up. "Does the hunger increase over time - the desire to hunt and feast?"
"Not really," said Margon. "It,s always inside us. We feel partial, diminished, spiritually starved if we don,t give in to it, but I would say that is there from the beginning. Indeed, one can get sick of it, and withdraw for long periods, ignoring the voices." He stopped.
"And your strength, does this increase?" Laura asked.
"Skill increases, of course," said Margon, "and wisdom. Ideally that increases as well. We have bodies that renew themselves constantly. But our hearing, our vision, our physical abilities - these do not increase."
He looked at Reuben as though inviting his questions now. He hadn,t done this before.
"The voices," said Reuben. "Can we talk now about the voices?"
He,d tried to be patient, but this seemed the moment surely to cut to the point.
"Why do we hear the voices?" he asked. "I mean I understand our sensitive hearing, it,s part of the transformation, but why do the voices of people who need us bring on the change? And why would stem cells in our bodies transform us into something that can track the scent of malice and cruelty - it,s the scent of evil, isn,t it - and we,re driven to seek to wipe it out?"
He put down his napkin. He looked intently at Margon.
"This is for me the central mystery," Reuben continued. "It,s the moral mystery for me. Man into monster, all right, it,s not magic. It,s science and it,s science we don,t know. I can accept that. But why do I smell fear and suffering? Why am I impelled to go to it? Every time I,ve killed, it,s been a consummately evil perpetrator. I,ve never erred." He looked from Margon to Felix and to Thibault. "Surely it,s the same for you."
"It is," said Thibault. "But it,s chemical. It,s in our physical nature. We smell evil and we are driven almost madly to attack it, destroy it. We cannot distinguish between an innocent victim and ourselves. They are one and the same to us. What the victim suffers we suffer."
"Is this God-given?" asked Stuart. "Are you going to tell me that?"
"I,m telling you just the opposite," said Thibault. "These are finely developed biological traits, rooted in the elusive chemistry of our glands and our brains."
"Why is it that particular way?" asked Reuben. "Why aren,t we chemically driven to track the innocent and devour them? They,re sweet enough."
Margon smiled. "Don,t try it," he said. "You,ll fail."
"Oh, I know. This is what undid Marrok. He couldn,t bring himself merely to do away with Laura. He had to ask forgiveness of her, launching into a long confession as to why she had to die."
Margon nodded.
"How old was Marrok?" asked Reuben. "How much experience had he had? Shouldn,t he have been able to defeat us both?"
Margon nodded. "Marrok wanted to do away with himself," he said. "Marrok was weary, careless - the shell of the being he,d once been."
"Doesn,t surprise me," said Laura. "He challenged us to destroy him. At first, I thought he was trying to confuse us, frighten us to death, so to speak. Then I realized he simply couldn,t do what he wanted unless we fought back."
"That,s exactly right," said Reuben. "And then when we fought back, he wasn,t able to overmaster us. Certainly he must have, on some level, known that this would be the case."
"You are going to tell me, aren,t you," asked Stuart, "who this person was, this Marrok?"
"The story of Marrok is finished," said Margon. "For reasons of his own he wanted to destroy Reuben. He,d passed the Chrism through carelessness and convinced himself that he had to eliminate the evidence of his mistake."
"Just as I passed it to you," murmured Reuben.
"Ah, but you,re very young," said Thibault. "Marrok was old."
"And so my life opens up in flaming colors," said Stuart exuberantly. "And with the blare of trumpets!"
Margon laughed indulgently with a knowing glance at Felix.
"But truly, why do we seek to protect the victims of evil, to prevent them from being murdered or raped?" Reuben asked.
"Little wolf," said Margon, "you want a splendid answer, don,t you? A moral answer, as you say. I wish I had one for you. I fear it was a matter of evolution like everything else."
"This evolved in Morphenkinder?" asked Reuben.
"No," said Margon. He shook his head. "It evolved in the species from which the power came to us. And they were not Homo sapiens sapiens as we