CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

My enemy is part of me. He is the fragmental who delighted so much in sensation, a traitor who refused to reintegrate. Before I heard the teacher in Galilee, I was like a small child, unable to see beyond myself. Thanks to Shakura, I changed, but my enemy remained like a child and he must surely have thought that I had gone insane. No, I just grew up.

I also understand why I do not like my memories—they remind me of what I once was. The enemy and I hate each other as only siblings can, or perhaps a better way to put it: the hatred is that deep loathing that a person reserves for himself. A feeling of that depth can never be projected on another, but only onto ourselves.

Exhaustion sweeps over me, leaving me weak in its wake. As I drift off, I remember the teacher. After recovering from my wound at the hand of my enemy, I tracked the teacher to a nearby village. Contriving to place a fragmental in him, I found a man filled with faith. Yet even in him I found a residue of doubt. The doubt did not matter to me because he had delivered the necessary message. I was ready to listen and the hope of Shakura touched me as nothing else could.

The teacher was only one of many who spread the teachings of the man from Nazareth. Though his name is lost to history, I still remember Josiah.

The barge has stopped moving when I wake. We are moored at our next stop—Greenville, Mississippi. This is Mississippi Delta country, flat and wet, fields full of soybeans, corn, and cotton. It is night again. The night is my friend. Climbing out of the barge, I find Rose waiting for me. We touch and my fragmental learns of the evil that is our kin.

We agree that Rose will continue down the river, taking this fragmental with her to protect her from the enemy. I will go into the city. If I need my other fragmental, I will call the radio-phone on the barge.

“You look lousy,” Rose says. She is unaware of my communication with the fragmental inside her, but she is not a stupid woman. She knows that she is acting oddly in the presence of a fugitive from the law.

I smile. “You are right.” I have seen my host through Rose’s eyes. My hair hangs down around my face in lifeless blonde strands. I am dirty and smell of damp unwashed clothes.

“Goodbye,” I say, walking away with only my empty knapsack. The docks are busy, even at this time of night, and I try my best to stay in the shadows. I work my way inland, past warehouses and all-night bars. A great wall of dirt appears before me, built to keep the river at bay.

Grass covers the levee, and after I climb this manmade hill, I turn to look back. The river glistens under the moonlight. A towboat is coming into the docks, sweeping the river with its searchlights. A bridge across the river is a half-mile away, the headlights of cars regularly passing across it. Another road leads from the docks toward the city.

I have never been to Greenville, but Rose has and her memories, which are part of me now, led me down to the road. The scent of magnolia trees hangs in the air, riding the sticky layers of warm air. A jogging path leads away from the road and up across the second levee. The Army Corps of Engineers liked to hedge the odds in its ongoing battle with old man river.

After the third levee, I find myself on a dirt road in an impoverished neighborhood. Old railroad tracks run part of the way down the center of the street before curving toward the river. The houses are made of cheap pine planks, with tarpaper roofs. The moon is high in the sky and I can see that many of the roofs are either crumpled in or have only a few strips of tarpaper left. Only in one house does light show from behind a thick blind. I suspect that few of the houses have residents.

My brief walk, a mile maybe, has worn me out. I find a house that has knee-high grass growing in its front yard. There is no front door and the rooms stinks of mold and urine. I hunker down in a corner. It is a basic instinct, human or animal, to protect our backs, so I press my back against the wall. I pull my jacket close against me.

Though tired, sleep does not come. I start to think about the enemy. He is me, which means that I am responsible for him. The deaths of the senator, Mrs. Foster, the FBI agents, and who knows how many scores during the centuries are my responsibility. I know his pathological hatred. He will never stop hunting me, or killing all that I touch, and destroying everything that crosses his path.

Because my enemy is a fragmental, not a whole, he has certain limitations. He can only be in one body at a time. When his host dies, he must transfer to another host before the biological processes stop and the brain dies. In reality, it is amazing that he has not died through some mishap during the last two thousand years. The sinking of a boat, or crash of a plane would deprive him of another host. Obviously my enemy avoids such situations, just as I would.

He has two other skills. He can touch a person and kill him, just as I can. That is probably how he killed the FBI agents, which pathologists attributed to poison. Of course, maybe the cause really is poison. I am sure that my doppelganger is well versed in poisons and weapons. Over the years, I have acquired the knowledge of such things through the memories of those whom I touch. We are both able to fly airplanes, program computers, paint a masterpiece, or anything else that we have learned from our hosts or from those people whom my fragmentals have plumed.

His other skill would be an ability to encourage people to do what he wants. This is a latent skill within me, rarely used, since I have fragmentals to provide more direct motivation. My fragmentals can do what they will within a person, but my enemy cannot place a fragmental within a person; it can only touch a person and send strong impressions. I suspect, though I do not know for certain, that it can only encourage people to do what they were already inclined to do. If a murderer is ready to commit the deed, but restrained by fear or guilt, my enemy can help overcome that restraint.

Damn, I should have killed him when he was in the senator. If I had beaten the senator to death, he would have perished with the body. Instead I ran, and he took the opportunity to leap into the first person who found the senator, a hapless janitor.

“That was fun,” a slurred voice said, laughing loudly, then coughing.

Two men have entered my refuge. Heavy boots stomp on the wood-planked floor. My reverie is broken and I tense up. They cannot see me in the corner.

“How much we git?” another voice asks.

“Why the hell da you care?” the first voice demands. “I going to keep it.”

“But, Bourque,” the second whines. “I hit him first. It’s my money too.”

“Kiss my ass,” the first mutters as he slumps down to the floor. A bottle rings as it hits the floor and I gag as a smelly wave of cheap liquor passes over me. It is people like this that give the homeless a bad reputation.

The whining continues. “You always mean to me, Bourque. I thought you was my friend. You never give me booze anymore.” The voice shuffles across the room, right towards me. I am concerned that he might be armed.

“Please don’t hurt me,” I say in a soft voice. Being a woman gives me a certain advantage. They will not feel threatened.

“What? Who is that?” Bourque demands, lurching to his feet in a clatter of sounds.

The second one sweeps out with his hands and catches my arm. “I got her,” he cries out in delight.

But I have him as I cast a fragmental inside. The other one comes closer and I touch him. These two men are Bourque Fournier and Soileau Passeau, both Cajuns from near Morgan City on the Gulf Coast. They are far away from the shrimping fleets and oil rigs of their youth, and they had just beaten a man and taken six dollars from his wallet. There was a credit card too, but they do not know where to fence it.

Bourque is the leader, a small, wiry fellow whose mind is addled with too much liquor. He has not quite reached thirty and is mean to the core; the only reason he doesn’t hurt more people is a decided lack of imagination. His meanness is not inborn; it never is. His father frequently used a belt on Bourque and thought that near-drowning was an amusing form of punishment. He knows what it is to gasp for air as blackness closes in. Often he regained consciousness with his hair already dry from the dunking. Even though he has a reason to be mean, he is now a cur, a rabid animal who needs to be put down.

He can also prove to be useful, so my fragmental will remain in him. If Joanna is slain and my core must transfer, I prefer to take him as my alternate rather than Rose.

The other man is Soileau Passeau, still in his teens. He is a sad case. When he urinates, he does so in absolute privacy. Even his buddy does not know that his piss is not yellow, but black. His father peed the same devil piss, and his mother condemned them both as filled with the darkness of Satan. She should know, she went to Mass every Sunday and confessed her sins after eating of the blood and flesh of Christ. When he was twelve, he left home and now he was here.

The condition is called alkaptonuria, a hereditary malady that means nothing. His body does not process homogentisic acid like most people and so passes the acid out with his urine; the acid turns black on contact with air. The only known side effect is arthritis in later years. Ignorance combined with superstition and a lack of charity has led to tragedy.

Soileau is a follower, and will use his fists when told to do so by his friend. But down deep, he is not mean, he does not crave to hurt others. I decide to send him away with a strong suggestion to tell a doctor about his urine. There is hope for him, but unfortunately I do not have the time to help him any more than that.