? I’ve told you: it is possible to bend a tulpa to your will. All you have to do is
.”
“I’m in no condition to change anything. I’ve struggled with it—struggled to the end of my strength—and I’ve been bested.”
Diogenes smirked. “How like you, Aloysius. You’re so used to everything being easy that, at the first sign of difficulty, you throw up your hands like a petulant child.”
“All that makes me unique has been drawn from me like marrow from a bone. There’s nothing left.”
“You’re wrong. Only the outer carapace has been torn away: this supposed superweapon of intellect you’ve recently taken upon yourself. The core of your being remains—at least for now. If it was gone, completely gone, you’d know it—and we wouldn’t be speaking now.”
“What can I do? I can’t struggle any longer.”
“That’s precisely the problem. You’re looking at it the wrong way: as a struggle. Have you forgotten all they taught you?”
For a moment, Pendergast sat staring at his brother, uncomprehending. Then, quite suddenly, he understood.
“The lama,” he breathed.
Diogenes smiled. “Bravo.”
“How . . .” Pendergast stopped, began again. “How do you know these things?”
“You know them, too. For the moment, you were simply too . . .
to see them. Now, go forth and sin no more.”
Pendergast glanced away from his brother, toward the stripes of gold light that slanted in through the latticed door. He realized, with a faint surprise, that he was afraid: that the very last thing he wanted to do was step out through that door.
Taking a deep breath, he willed himself to push it open.
Yawning, passionate blackness took him once again. Again came the hungry, enveloping thing: again he felt the dreadful alienness
He took one more breath, summoning his last reserves of physical and emotional strength. He knew he would have only one chance; after that, he would be lost forever, consumed utterly.
Emptying his mind as best he could, he put aside the ravening thing and recalled the lama’s own teachings on desire. He imagined himself on a lake, quite saline, precisely at body temperature, of indeterminate color. He imagined himself floating in it, perfectly motionless. Then—and this was hardest of all—he slowly stopped struggling.
he asked himself.
A pause.
Another pause.
More quickly now:
His limbs convulsed in a long shudder, then relaxed. Throughout his mental and physical being—in every muscle, every synapse—he felt the tulpa hesitate. There was a strange, utterly inexpressible moment of stasis. Then, slowly, the thing relaxed its hold.
And as it did so, Pendergast let a new image—single, powerful, inescapable—form in his mind.
As if from far away, he heard his brother speak again:
.
For a moment, Diogenes became visible again. Then, as quickly as he had come, he began to fade away.
“Wait,” Pendergast said. “Don’t go.”
“But I must.”
“I have to know. Are you really dead?”
Diogenes did not answer.
“Why did you do this? Why did you help me?”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Diogenes replied. “I did it for my child.” And as he faded into the enfolding dark, he gave a small, enigmatic smile.
Constance sat in the wing chair at Pendergast’s feet. A dozen times, she had raised the gun and pointed it at his heart; a dozen times, she had hesitated. She had hardly noticed when the ship righted itself suddenly, when it drove forward again at high speed. For her, the ship had ceased to exist.
She could wait no longer. It was cruel to let him suffer. He had been kind to her; she should respect what, she was certain, would be his wishes. Taking a strong grip on the weapon, she raised it with fresh resolve.
A violent shudder raked Pendergast’s frame. A moment later, his eyes fluttered open.
“Aloysius?” she asked. For a moment, he did not move. Then he gave the faintest of nods.
Suddenly, she became aware of the smoke ghost. It had materialized by the agent’s shoulder. For a moment it was still. Then it drifted first one way, then another, almost like a dog searching for a scent. Shortly, it began to move away.
“Do not interfere,” Pendergast whispered. And for a moment Constance feared the dreadful change was still over him. But then he opened his eyes again and looked at her, and she knew the truth immediately.
“You’ve come back,” she said.
He nodded.
“How?” she whispered.
When he answered, it was in the faintest of voices. “That which I took on when I beheld the Agozyen has been burned away in my struggle. Not unlike the lost wax process in metal casting. All that now remains is the . . . original.”
