4
“Say what?” I asked.
5
“That’s what you want to know,” Bennet said. “There 6
was a rich man somewhere on the Mediterranean who 7
wanted to experiment on a child. A thousand miles south 8
of him, there was a political campaign of famine being 9
waged. And among the population there were many 10
mothers who would have jumped at the offer of feeding 11
the rest of her family at the cost of one son. I was just a 12
conduit, a wire making the circuit. If one child had not 13
died, the whole family would have perished.”
14
“You could have saved them all,” I said.
15
“That time maybe. And maybe I did once in a while.
16
But the power is drained away if you never meet your ob-17
ligations. The rich man I aided gave me power that some 18
presidents wouldn’t have understood.”
19
“Is it the guilt over that child that brings you here?”
20
“No. I don’t think so. Can I have some oatmeal?”
21
22
23
I made his afternoon meal of porridge and returned to 24
watch him eat.
25
“Can I have light tonight?” he asked me.
26
“You could go home and sit next to a fire.”
27 S
“I don’t want to go. I have to wait out the time.”
28 R
“Then you can stay, but I want to hear everything. No more games.”
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