CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I despise my parent. He is my mother and father, my sister and my brother, my only kin. I remember so vividly the pleasure that we enjoyed before he decided to take a more pure path. My references to him are masculine, because even in my loathing, I cannot conceive of him being female. If he is female, then I was once female. Only twice have I ever taken a woman as an emergency host, and both times I left as quickly as possible. Stronger bodies are better.

My current host is known as Jonathan Franklin, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a wonderfully powerful position. Thousands of federal agents scour the nation for my father, aided by local yokels in uniforms.

My limousine is stuck in traffic in the suburbs of Cleveland. Two agents sit in the front seat, one as the chauffeur, the other as a bodyguard. Lead and trailing cars are filled with more bodyguards. My Washington office received an anonymous letter threatening my life, so the extra protection is justified. Of course, I caused the letter to be written and sent.

Getting into Franklin was not hard. When the senator was wounded, I knew that I needed to leave. The strike from the statue was not mortal, but I feared an extended hospital stay where I would be sedated and vulnerable. So I leapt into the janitor, and from there into a police lieutenant who was questioning me. Then the FBI special agent-in-charge for Cleveland. Two days later, I had the chance to take the Director.

Spinning a web that I am quite proud of, I have manipulated a grand hunt for my father. For two thousand years I have not met my father, yet I have always known that he was out there somewhere. It is much easier for him to survive than for me. When we met in that office and touched, I was surprised, but to my astonishment, he did not recognize me.

How could he forget me? Careful analysis of that encounter has shown me that he suffers from a massive amount of repression. Such a human trait, like the cattle that we move among and use as hosts. He is denying his true self.

The seats are vinyl, not leather, but there is a sense of potency in riding in a luxury car, surrounded by underlings. The hunt is going well, and I believe that my father is running blindly scared. He is weak, so I have increased the pressure on him. Renewed contact with my father has taught me to recognize the scent of where a fragmental had been by merely touching a person. So now, whenever I find a person that he has touched, I slay them because I know that he feels a responsibility to them and what happens to them. By driving his fear and guilt to an ever higher pitch, he will make mistakes.

There is a downside to my tactics. So many people have died in the presence of Director Franklin that this body is starting to become a liability. People are getting suspicious, just as they became suspicious of the Cleveland police lieutenant when so many people died at Jenkins State Hospital.

What will I do with him if I catch him? Part of me wants to convince him that we should be one, that combined we can return to our old ways. Unlike him, I revel in my memories, especially those before our divorce. We roved the world, masters of all that we touched. Once, during the chaos of war in upper Egypt, we placed a fragmental within a woman, observing while she went insane. The cause of her distress was the torturing of her children in front of her. Our fragmentals were in the children and the torturers too, and when it was all over, we combined into one whole. We perceived and understood the situation from all points of view. That description is too intellectual; we experienced the situation as each person lived it. Such a torrent of sensory stimuli, such a range of emotions: raw terror, pleasure, pain, horror.

The so-called negative emotions are so much more intense than the so-called positive emotions. Though I must admit, that with the proper preparation, a positive emotion is truly sublime. Cresting toward an orgasm, the tenderness of love for a child, feelings of well-being are rewarding in their own way.

But I can feel so little now. As an orphan fragmental, I must completely possess an individual. All that remains of my host is their memories, stored in unreliable matrixes of neurochemistry. It is not like when I could be a simple fragmental, perched on a roost in someone’s mind, watching and recording everything with facilities of perfect recall.

For two thousand years, I have lived a shadow life, knowing that a much greater intensity was possible. But my father took that intensity from me. Damn that bastard...but I am the bastard, the rejected child.

Our reunion was fateful, though I do not believe in fate. We each make our own destiny. I am new to the United States, having spent the last century in the Middle East and Africa, and was attracted to taking Senator Handlin for the usual reason—the power he wielded. But there was more than that, though I did not recognize it at the time. I found the senator so singularly attractive as a host because of the spore of a fellow fragmental inside him. The fragmental was not in there when I occupied the senator, but my brother left his scent. I did not consciously realize that the scent was there, but an inarticulate part of me did.

When my father and I met, I did not react fast enough and he got in the first blow. Oh, the regrets! If I had moved first and struck him down then the story would be so different. I could have slowly milked the life out of him and after finding a way to take away that essence that makes him the core of us, I would then be the father and he would be the bastard.

I still want that essence, so I hunt him. He flees like a coward. All that Christ worship has made him weak. Fear impairs his ability to think, so I turn up the volume. I know him, his weakness, his nostalgia for those people he has touched. My killing every one of them deflates him with guilt.

How could he abandon me to service the needs of others? My needs—our needs—were the only needs that counted. We are unique, a separate order of being, and are not obligated to treat humans as anything other than toys.

Ours was a quest for new forms of sensuality and intellectual stimulation. Innumerable times, when we were one, we examined the problem of pain. A fragmental was placed into a victim, to watch the reaction to agony. The agony was not always physical; often we contrived a situation to examine emotional pain—the possibilities were limitless. One can only feel so many variations of physical pain.

A secure phone rings.

“This is Franklin,” I say.

It is the special agent-in-charge for the Columbus office. “We have a lead, sir. A barge captain in Greenville, Mississippi tried to run when we attempted to question her.”

“She was captured?”

“Yes, sir. And even better, her boat passed down the Ohio River the same day that Fisher and Yalom were captured and poisoned.” The agent’s voice tightened as he spoke of his fallen colleagues.

“What is her name?”

“Rose Gardner.”