"Don,t go thinking you,re immortal, Little Boy," he said under his breath. He reached out and pinched the loose flesh right above Reuben,s left wrist. "Please don,t go thinking that."
"But what if we have great longevity, Jim? I mean, I don,t know, but that Marrok creature. I got the distinct impression that the thing had been around for a long time."
"Why do you say that?"
"Something he said about remembering, remembering his early curiosity when he couldn,t remember anything else. I don,t know. I confess, I,m guessing, going by my gut."
"It could be the opposite," Jim said. "You just don,t know. You,re right about the forensics. There,s no other explanation as to why they have nothing, and Celeste says they have nothing.... And Mom says they can,t explain it but the materials they gather simply self-destruct."
"I knew it. And Mom knows that,s what happened to the specimens they took from me."
"She hasn,t said so. But Mom knows something. And Mom is afraid. Also Mom,s obsessed. This Russian doctor, he,s supposed to arrive here tomorrow, and take her to see this little hospital in Sausalito - ."
"That is a dead end!"
"I understand, but I don,t like it. I mean, I want you to tell Mom, but I don,t like it, this Paris doctor, what he,s got in mind. Dad doesn,t like it either. He,s already had it out with Mom that she better not be suggesting committing you against your will."
"What?"
"Look, I,m telling you what I,ve been hearing. Mom and Dad can,t find any mention of this hospital on the Internet or any doctor that,s ever heard of such a place."
"Well, what the hell is Mom thinking?"
"I do not see how much more harm you could do to Mom by telling her the whole truth. But I,d get her alone to do that, away from this Paris doctor, whoever he is. Reuben, you can,t let yourself fall into private hands. That,s worse than any scenario you,ve imagined."
"Private hands!"
Jim nodded. "I don,t like it. I don,t know that Mom actually likes it. But Mom,s desperate."
"Jim, I can,t tell her. Private hospital, government hospital, it doesn,t matter. Fearing your son has become a monster is one thing; hearing him confess it in detail would be too much. Besides, it,s not going to happen. That is not the path for me. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn,t have told you."
"Don,t say that, Little Boy."
"Listen to me. I fear what you fear - that this thing will consume me, that I will lose my inhibitions one by one, that I will lose all perspective finally and obey its physical imperatives without question - ."
"Dear God."
" - but Jim, I will not go into this without a fight. I am not bad, Jim. I am good. I know it. I feel it. My soul is me. And I am not a creature without conscience, without empathy, without the capacity for good."
Reuben opened his right hand on his chest.
"In here, I know this," he said. "And I,ll tell you something else."
"Please."
"I am not progressing with this, Jim. I,ve reached a kind of plateau. I battle it, I seek to come to terms with it, I learn new things from it every time it happens, but I am not devolving, Jim."
"Reuben, you said yourself everything else was paling in comparison to what you think and feel when this change comes! Now you,re saying that,s not so?"
"My soul is not decaying," said Reuben. "I swear it. Look at me and tell me that I,m not your brother."
"You,re my brother, Reuben," he said. "But those men you killed, they were your brothers, too. Damn, what can I say to make it any clearer? The woman you killed was your sister! We are not beasts of the wild, for the love of heaven, we are human beings. We are all kin! Look, you don,t have to believe in God to believe that. You don,t have to believe doctrine or dogma to know what I,m saying is true."
"Okay, Jimmy, take it easy, take it easy." Reuben reached for the carafe of coffee and refilled Jim,s cup.
Jim sat back, trying to get control, but the tears were in his eyes. Reuben had never seen Jim cry. Jim was almost ten years older than him. Jim had been a tall, clever, and self-possessed adolescent by the time Reuben crawled out of toddlerhood. He,d never known Jim as a child.
Jim was looking out into the woods. The afternoon sun was traveling west and the house cast a big shadow now over the nearest grove of trees, but it broke through gloriously in the distance where the woods ran uphill towards the southern end of the redwood forest.
"And you don,t even know what brings on the change, or how to control it," Jim murmured almost absently, his eyes distant, and his voice dispirited. "Will you change into this thing every night of your life from now on?"
"That,s impossible," Reuben said. "This species, Morphenkinder, it couldn,t survive if it changed every night, if it lived like this. I have to believe that,s not how it works. And I,m learning how to control it. I,ll learn how to bring it on and how to make it stop. That thing, that guardian, Marrok, he changed at will, just like that, when he was ready. I,ll learn."
Jim sighed. He shook his head.
A quiet fell between them. Jim kept looking at the forest. The winter afternoon was dying fast. Reuben wondered what Jim could hear, what scents he could detect. The forest was living, breathing, gasping, whispering. The forest was redolent with the smell of life and death. Was that a form of prayer? Was that a striving towards the spiritual? Was that spiritual in itself? He wanted so to talk about these thoughts with Jim, but he couldn,t. He couldn,t expect that of Jim now. He stared off beyond the oak forest at the ghostly haze of the redwoods that lay far beyond. The world went to dusk in shades of blue. He felt himself drifting, drifting away from this table, this conversation, this confession.
Suddenly, softly, Jim,s voice brought him back.
"This is an exceptional place, this," Jim said. "Ah, but what a price you,ve paid for it."
"Don,t I know?" Reuben pressed his lips together in a bitter smile.
He put his hands together in an attitude of prayer and began the Act of Contrition: " ,O my God I am heartily sorry, ... heartily sorry, I am; with all my heart, I swear it, I am heartily sorry; please show me the way. God, please show me what I am, what manner of thing I am. Please give me the strength, against all temptation, to do no harm to anyone, somehow to do no harm, but to be a force for love in Your Name."
He meant these prayers, but he did not deeply feel them. He had a sense of the world around him, insofar as he could grasp it, and of the tiny speck that was the planet Earth, spinning in the galaxy of the Milky Way, and of how tiny was that galaxy in the vast far-flung universe beyond human grasp. He had the sinking feeling that he was speaking not to God but to Jim, and for Jim. But hadn,t he spoken to God in another way last night? Wasn,t he speaking to God in his own way when he looked out there at the living, striving forest and he felt in all his parts that that striving of all living things was a form of prayer?