The Worthing Saga (34 page)

That was all right. Adam had grown into other amusements. Now he lay awake at night, and went exploring in the minds of the villagers of Worthing Town. Enoch Cooper first, because Adam was doing a thing to him each night when he went at his wife. Last night he had made him go limp as a leaf just before the, end. Tonight he stayed with him for an hour, never letting him finish, until his wife, who was long since satisfied, begged him to quit and go to sleep. Oh, Enoch Cooper did swear and call on Jason, and he couldn't sleep for the tightness of his groin.

Then Adam found Goody Miller, who kept cats. Last night he made her favorite hiss and scratch at her, so she cried herself to sleep. Tonight he made her hold the cat's head under the millstone. In the old days it would have been the crushing of the cat that Adam relished, but there was far more pleasure now in being inside Goody Miller's mind as she screamed and grieved over the cat, “What have I done to you! What have I done!”

And Raggy—he was always fun to do things to, because for so long he had bossed them all in whatever game they played. He got Raggy to stand out of his bed, take off his nightgown, go to Mary Hooker's place beside the river and stand at her door playing with himself, until her father opened it and drove him off with kicks and curses. Oh, this was a grand night.

In the back of his mind, each person that he did things to became a little dry corpse, and he added it to a growing pile of corpses at the door. Is that good, Papa? Is that enough?

He made Ann Baker think that there were little spiders on her breasts, and she scratched and tore at them until they were a mass of blood and her husband had to bind her hands behind her.

Is that enough?

Sammy Barber went to his shop and filed his razors flat.

Is that enough?

Veddy Upstreet nursed her baby in the night, and suddenly the child refused to breathe, no matter what she did.

Stop.

Wouldn't breathe no matter—

“Stop.”

Adam opened his eyes, and there stood Father in the doorway. John stirred beside Adam in the bed. “Stop what, Papa?” asked Adam.

“What you have came to you from Jason. Not for this.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” In the Upstreet house, the baby breathed again, and Veddy wept in relief.

“You are no son of mine.”

“I'm just playing, Papa.”

“With other people's pain? If you do this again I'll kill you. I ought to kill you now.” Elijah held a knotted hemp in his hand, and he dragged Adam from the bed, pulled his nightgown up over his head and arms, and began to beat him.

From the bed, little John cried, “Papa, stop! Papa, no!”

“You're too softhearted, John,” Father said, grunting from the force of the blows he gave. Adam writhed in his grasp, so the rope struck him on the back and belly, hip and head, until Adam did what he had never dared to do, and made his father hold
still.

And Elijah held still.

Adam pulled free of his father's grasp and gazed in wonder at him. “I am stronger than you,” he said. Then he laughed, despite the pain of the blows his father gave him. He took the hemp from his father's hand and raised his father's nightgown over his head. He tapped his father with the hemp.

“No,” whispered John.

“Hold your tongue or I'll do you, too.”

“No,” said John aloud.

In answer Adam struck his father across the belly with the rope. Elijah did not so much as flinch. “See, John? It doesn't hurt.”

“Why doesn't Papa move?”

“He likes it.” He kicked his father in the groin with all his strength. Again not a sound; but the blow overbalanced him, and Elijah toppled over backward, lay helpless and unmoving on the floor, looking for all the world alike one of the corpses on the pile. What are you doing, Papa, lying on the pile? Do you want to burn with Mama? Are you dry? Adam kicked and beat and stamped and John screamed, “Uncle Matthew! Uncle Matthew!” And suddenly Adam felt himself flying across the room, slamming into the leathers hanging on the wall.

Uncle Matthew stood at the top of the cellar stairs. “Get your clothing,” Matthew said.

Adam tried to make him hold still, just like Elijah, but he couldn't seem to find Uncle Matthew's mind. Suddenly he felt himself burn up inside, so that he clawed at his belly to let the fire out. Then he felt his eyes melting, dripping down onto his cheeks, and in terror he screamed and tried to push them back in place. Then his legs began to crumble like a sugar man, and he lurched closer and closer to the floor; he bent over and watched the pieces of his face fall off and lie shriveling on the floor, ears and nose and lips and teeth and tongue, his eyes last like jelly, only now he looked up from those eyes at his empty face, just blank and featureless skin with a gaping hole for his mouth, and he saw the mouth suddenly fill from inside, and out came his heart, and then his liver, and then his stomach and bowel as his body emptied itself, until he was light and empty as a flourbag in spring—

And then he lay on the floor, weeping and pleading for mercy, for forgiveness, for his body back the way it was.

“Adam,” John said softly from the bed, “what's wrong with you?”

Adam touched his face and everything was there, as it should be; he opened his eyes, and he could see. “I'm sorry,” he whispered. “I'll never do it again.”

Elijah was crying where he sat now, leaning against the wall. “Ah, Matthew,” he wept, “what have I made here? What monster have I made?”

Matthew shook his head. “What harms have you done to Adam that you haven't also done to John? The child is what he is—he eats what you feed him, but he turns the food into himself.”

Then Elijah realized something, and smiled despite his pain. “I
was
right. You are one of us, just as I said.”

“Please don't do it again,” Adam whispered.

“You and your father,” Matthew said. “Neither of you knows what your power is for. Do you think Jason made us to live forever on a farm, Elijah? Or to play cruel pranks on people who can't protect themselves? I am watching you now, both of you. I'll have you do no more harm. You have both done enough harm in your life. Now it's time that you began to heal.”

Adam lived at Matthew's inn for two more years. Then, on a day when he could bear it no more, he fled empty-handed, stole a boat and went down river to Linkeree. On the way he searched backward, looked in Worthing Inn until he found his uncle's son, little Matt, a baby just learning his first words. He made the baby speak aloud; “Goodbye, Uncle Matthew.” And then he killed it.

He waited for the answering blow from Matthew's mind, but it never came. I am beyond his reach, Adam realized. I am safe at last. I can do what I like.

He made his way to Heaven City, the capital of the world. Adam was safe on every road, for who could even think of harming him? And he was never hungry, for so many people yearned to give him food. In Heaven City he waited and watched. This much he had learned from Uncle Matthew: his power would not be used for games. He had read the stone in the middle of Worthing Farm, as all the blue-eyed children read it: “From the stars blue-eyed one, from this land Jason's son.” I am the first to leave the Forest of Waters. I am Jason's son. I will not be content with a plot of ground, or even with an inn. The world should be enough for me.

And bit by bit, the world came to him.

Came to him in the shape of a girl, not so little anymore, the granddaughter of Elena of Noyock. She haunted the palace, always just out of sight, holding still in a comer, under a stair, by a curtain. It was not that she was unsupervised. Some of the servants were probably detailed to keep an eye on her. But it didn't matter much. No one cared that much about her, for she had a younger brother, and Noyock's rulers were succeeded by the eldest male. Elena of Noyock was merely guardian, in favor of her grandson, Ivvis. What was Uwen, the daughter, the invisible? When Adam first came to live at Elena's palace, he noticed her, determined that she was nothing, and ignored her.

So a year had passed, in which Adam had made himself indispensible to Elena of Noyock. He had risen quickly, but not suspiciously so—no higher or faster than native genius might make a young man rise. Now Elena sent him to conduct delicate negotiations for her—he always seemed to extract the very most that could be won from any situation. Now Elena had him choose her servants and her guards, for the ones he chose were loyal and served well; he was never deceived. And when he told her what her enemies were planning, his information always turned out to be correct. Elena prospered. Noyock even prospered. Above all, Adam prospered. Everyone watched him as he made his way through the chambers and porches of Heaven City. Watched him with envy, or hatred, or admiration, or fear.

Except for Uwen. Uwen watched him with love. Whenever Adam noticed her, he noticed that. Saw in her memory that she came sometimes to his room at night, as he lay alone on his mat in the darkness. In the night she studied him, when he was alone and when he was not alone, studied him and wondered how this man from nowhere had managed to be powerful, to be noticed, to be somebody, when she, the daughter of a lord, granddaughter of Elena of Noyock, she had never been noticed at all. What do you do, she wondered? How do you know what you know? How do you say what you say?

But by the time Adam noticed that Uwen was asking these questions, she had the answer. Adam was the enchanted man. Adam was the man of wood from the forest. She knew all the old tales. Adam was the Son of God. When he climbed the stairs to the third floor to go to bed one night, she was leaning on the banister at the top. Not hiding anymore. It was time, she had decided, to be seen.

“What did you do, Adam Waters?” asked Uwen. “For a living, I mean. Before you came here.” She perched on the banister above the steep drop down the stairwell.

“I looked for little girls who wanted to die, and I pushed them down stairwells,” said Adam.

“I'm fourteen years old,” said Uwen, “and I know your secret.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “I have no secrets.”

“You have one very big secret,” said Uwen. “And your secret is that you know all the other people's secrets.”

Adam smiled. “Do I?”

“You listen all the time, don't you? That's how I find out secrets. I listen. I've seen the way you pay such close attention to everyone who comes to our house. Mother says you are very wise, but I think you just listen.”

We wouldn't want people to think I'm wise, would we.

Uwen entwined herself into the rails like a weed grown up through a picket fence. “But when you listen,” said Uwen, “you even hear what people didn't say.”

Adam felt a thrill of fear. In all his maneuvering to rise through the ranks of diplomats and bureaucrats in Heaven City, no one had guessed his secret until now. How many people had he whispered to, who had recoiled in fear and said, “Who told you? How did you know?” But none had said, You even hear what people didn't say. Already Adam imagined Uwen's death. It would annoy her grandmother, but not seriously. The child was not particularly useful until she could be married to political advantage. It was not as if the child were loved. Adam felt no debt to Elena of Noyock. He had benefited her as much as she had him, and that made them even; he did not owe her his life itself. And it
was
his life at stake. For if people once guessed that instead of controlling a network of informers, as they all supposed, Adam Waters had only his own mind supplying him his secrets, then everyone he had blackmailed would be out to kill him, and Adam would be dead within a day. My life or yours, Uwen. “How could I hear them?” asked Adam.

“You lie on your back in bed,” said Uwen, “and you listen. Sometimes you smile, and sometimes you frown, and then you wake up and write letters, or go make visits, or tell Grandmother, 'The governor of Gravesend wants this much and no more,' or 'The bank of Wien has let all its gold slip away to build the highway, and they're buying at a premium now.' It gives you power. You're going to rule the world someday.”

“Don't you know that if you tell people such things, someone might actually believe you, and then my life would be in danger?” I could make the banister break right now, but the fall might not kill her.

“I don't tell secrets. I'll never tell yours, if you do one thing.”

I could make her erupt into flames from the inside out—it would be thorough, but perhaps too flamboyant. “You were a cute little girl, Uwen, but you're becoming something of a fart as you get older.”

“I'm becoming an unusually interesting young woman,” said Uwen. “And if you're planning on killing me, I've already written everything down. All my proof.”

“You don't have any proof. There's nothing to prove.”

“As Grandmother always says, innuendo is everything in politics. It's much easier to be believed when you're telling people that a powerful young man is really a monster.”

The banister creaked and began to crack.

“I love you,” said Uwen. “Marry me, get rid of my brother, and Noyock will be yours.”

“I don't want Noyock,” said Adam. The banister began tilting backward.

“You wouldn't dare,” said Uwen. “I'm second in line to the throne of Noyock. I can help you.”

“I can't think how,” said Adam.

“I know things.”

“Everything you know, I know,” said Adam.

“I would be the one person,” she said, “that you could tell the truth to. Don't you ever wish that you could tell the truth to somebody? You've been in Heaven City for five years now, and you're just about to play for everything, and when it's done what will you have to do with yourself?”

The banister righted itself. “You'd better get off that,” Adam said. “It isn't safe.”

She unwound her legs from the rails and clambered off, then walked to Adam where he stood leaning on the wall; she walked to him and pressed herself against him and said, “So you'll marry me?”

“Never,” said Adam, putting his hands behind her, holding her close to him.

“You want to marry power, don't you?” she said, lifting her skirt and guiding his hand to rest on her naked hip.

“You aren't the heir. Your brother Ivvis is.”