quality so much as a moral deformity. It was in their demeanor, but I caught it merely from scanning them carefully. All these men had committed crimes of some kind, with medicine, and their status was entirely dependent upon the protection of Gregory Belkin.
In other words, this was a gang of fugitive doctors hand-picked to do special jobs for Gregory.
It struck me as marvelously good luck that he had committed the Bones to this pack of fools, rather than to magicians. But then where would he find a magician?
What a different scene this might have been if he had called upon the Hasidim—zaddiks who didn’t hate or fear him—or on Buddhists or Zoroastrians. Even a Hindu doctor of Western mind might have been a danger.
I took an upright stance, still invisible, then drew close, until I was touching Gregory’s shoulder. I smelled his perfumed skin, his fine silken face. His voice was crisp and angry, concealing all his anxiety as if it were a cloud that he could collect and swallow and let out only in a perfect narrow stream of fluid speech.
The Bones. I felt nothing as I saw them. Do some good mischief here, get the scarf and get back to Rachel. Obviously the moving of the Bones had no effect on me; neither did the prying eyes of these doctors.
They were not in order. They were a haphazardly gathered skeleton, tumbled, their gold brilliant under the electric lights. Flecks of cloth clung to them, like bits of leaves or dirt. Ashes clung to them, but they seemed as solid as ever, as enduring.
Was my soul, my tzelem, locked within them?
Gregory knew I was there! He turned from right to left, but he couldn’t see me. The others—and there were six—noted his agitation, questioned him.
One man touched the casket.
“Don’t do it!” said Gregory. He was wonderfully afraid. I loved this too much!
There is always an element of pride in tormenting the solid and the living, but really, it was so easy, I had to restrain myself.
To test him and to test myself—that was my mission here, and I must not play games.
“We’ll handle them with extreme care, Gregory,” said a young doctor amongst them. “But we’re going to have to take some substantial scrapings; we’ve been through that. In order to get carbon dating and DNA, we may have to take—”
“And you want full DNA, don’t you,” asked another, eager for the eye and the favor of the leader. “You want everything we can come up with about this skeleton—gender, age, cause of death, anything that might be locked inside there—”
“—You’re going to be amazed what we can find out.”
“—the Mummy project in Manchester, you saw all that?”
Gregory gave them nods and stiff affirmations in silence because he knew I was there. I was invisible still, but now formed in all my parts and wearing my garments of choice, fluid enough to pass through him if I wanted to, which would have sickened him and hurt him and made him fall.
I touched Gregory’s cheek. He felt it, and he was petrified. I pushed my fingers into his hair. He drew in his breath.
On and on came the science babble—
“Size of the skull, a male, and the pelvis, probably, you realize…”
“Be careful with them!” Gregory burst out suddenly. The scientists were silenced. “I mean, treat them like a relic, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir, we understand, sir.”
“Look, the scientists who do this work on Egyptian and—”
“Don’t tell me how. Just tell me what! Keep it secret. We don’t have many days left, gentlemen.”
What could this mean?
“I don’t like stopping work for this, so do it at once.”
“Everything’s going splendidly,” said an older doctor. “Don’t worry about time. A day or two won’t matter.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Gregory said, crestfallen. “But something can still go wrong, very wrong.”
They nodded only because they feared to lose his favor. They debated now, speak, don’t speak, nod, bow, do what?
I drew in my breath and resolved to be visible; the air moved; there was a faint noise. The room felt a vague commotion as the particles gathered with tremendous force, yet I was taking no more than the first stage, the airy form.
The doctors looked about in confusion; the first to see me pointed. I was transparent, but vividly colored, and perfectly detailed.
Then the others saw me.
Gregory spun around to his right and looked at me.
I gave him my soft evil smile. I think it was evil anyway. I floated. In airy form, I had no need to stand, or to anchor. I was a thousand degrees from the density that obeys gravity. I stood on the ground, but I didn’t need to. This was a choice, like the position of a flower in a painting.
He glared at me, seeing the thin mirage of a long-haired man, clothed as I had been when I left him, but thinner than glass.
“This is a holograph, Gregory,” said one of the doctors.
“It’s being projected from somewhere,” said another. The men began to look around the room. “Yeah, it’s one of those cameras up there.”
“…it’s some sort of trick.”
“Well, who the hell would dare pull a thing like this in your own…”
“Quiet!” Gregory said.
He raised his hand for absolute obedience and he got it. His face was locked with fear and despair.
“Remember,” I said aloud, “I’m watching you.”
The cohorts heard me and commenced whispering and shuffling.
“Put your hand through it,” said the white-coated one closest to me. When Gregory failed to obey, the young man approached and moved to do it, and I merely looked at him and watched him and wondered what he felt, if it was a chill, or electric. His hand penetrated me, easily, causing no seam in the vision.
He drew back his hand.
“Somebody’s gotten into security,” he said quickly, looking me directly in the eyes. They were all babbling again, that someone was controlling the image, that someone somehow had figured a way to do this, and that it was probably—
Gregory couldn’t bring himself to answer.
I had accomplished my purpose.
He struggled desperately for some command, some powerful verbal weapon against me that wouldn’t make him the fool in the eyes of the others. Then he spoke in a cold voice.
“When you give me your reports, tell me exactly how these bones could be destroyed,” he said.
“Gregory, this is a holograph, this thing. I want to call security…”
“No,” he declared. “I know who is responsible for this little trick. I have it covered. It merely caught me off guard. There’s no breach. Get to work.”
His self-confidence and quiet air of command really were kingly.
I laughed softly. I kissed his cheek. It was rough and he drew back. But he faced me. The men were astonished by the gesture.
The men merely came closer, surrounding me, absolutely certain in their incredible ignorance and bigotry that I was an apparition being made electrically by someone else. For a moment, I scanned their faces. I saw wickedness in their faces, but it was a brand of wickedness I didn’t fully understand. It was too connected with power. These men loved their power. They loved their purpose, but what exactly was it that they did when they weren’t analyzing relics?
I let them study me, looking from face to face. Then I struck upon the mastermind. The tall emaciated
