Quicksilver(50)
As we got out of the Explorer, she told us to bring Winston. When he was freed from the SUV, he raced across the hardpan, past Panthea, and into the Quonset hut, as if he had once lived here and was excited to return home.
Panthea looked each of us in the eyes, nodding as if confirming our identity by some sixth sense. “Quinn, Bridget, Silas who calls himself Sparky. I knew you would come. The squad is now complete.”
“Squad?” I said.
“One squad of many but no less important than the others. Each of us is an aluf shel halakha, with a great responsibility.”
“We’re on a quest,” I said.
“It’s nothing as simple as a quest,” Bridget said.
“Isn’t it a quest?” I asked Panthea the seer.
“Perhaps a quest, but not only a quest.”
I was having none of that. “We find the equivalent of the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the elephants’ graveyard, and then it’s done.”
Sparky said, “What does that mean—aluf whatever?”
“When you know why you are,” Panthea Ching said, “you will know what those words mean.”
“Why I am? My mom and dad wanted a baby. That’s why I am. Now, please, Ms. Ching, what does aluf shell halibut mean?”
“It means nothing to you now. In time it will.”
Frustrated to be on the receiving end of the kind of enigmatic statements that he and Bridget had often dished out to me, Sparky said, “It was a simple question.”
“There are no simple questions,” the seer replied, “only simple answers, some of which it’s best you discern for yourself. Anyway, some squads prefer to say aluf shel teevee chok. Still others say Legis naturalis propugnator. The sentiment is the same.”
“And what is the sentiment?” Bridget asked.
“Resist,” said Panthea.
“Resist what?”
“You need not ask what you already know. Come in, come in. The ISA will be saturating the county with agents, but we have a few hours yet before they’ll be breaking down my door. You must see what I paint in my sleep. You will recognize it.”
I began to realize that this was not going to be the date on my calendar when I would learn the identity of my parents or even the least thing about them. The theme of the day was instead about the strange, cognizant Destiny that links human lives in unexpected ways. The Ching-Rainking-Quicksilver squad had been drawn together by something more than psychic magnetism; however, any attempt that I might make to define “something more” would lead me nowhere except to the insolvable mystery of human existence or into the cold waters of Hakeem Kaspar’s obsession.
As to the latter, when we followed Panthea into the Quonset hut, she seemed to have heard my thoughts, though she was merely acting in her role as the squad’s seer, disabusing us of whatever credibility we might have given to the possibility of mother ships and off-worlders who were gray or any other color. “This isn’t about extraterrestrials from other galaxies, or from a farther arm of our own, or from a moon of Saturn. That stuff is for the movies. If only our adversaries were evil ETs, I’d rejoice. But the war into which we’ve been drafted is older than Earth itself and older than the stars, and we have no choice but to give ourselves to the current battle. The war predates the universe, as do our enemies.”
How like madness that sounded at the time Panthea said it.
As I wrote earlier, I see every human being as an eccentric to one degree or another. This can be true only if our assumption that there is a standard for normality is wrong. And I believe it is wrong. The human race is at the apex of all life-forms because, no matter how strenuously sociologists and politicians and others of their persuasion insist on defining our species into interest groups and factions and classes and tribes, the better to control us, in truth our greatest strength is in the uniqueness of each of us. Einstein, in his genius, can reveal to us much about the workings of the universe, and a child with Down syndrome can teach us, by his or her profound gentleness and humility, how urgently this troubled world needs kindness. Everyone has something to contribute.
Everyone but sociopaths. Those empty souls possess no genuine human feelings—other than a lust for power—but are excellent at faking them. Some say that as many as 10 percent of human beings are sociopaths. Some are street thugs who will kill you for the contents of your wallet or merely for the thrill of it. Others are among the most elite and privileged groups in society.
Although Panthea’s claim that our adversaries were older than the universe sounded like lunacy, I knew she wasn’t a sociopath. I found it nearly impossible to think of John Kennedy Ching producing one. However, madness is a different thing from sociopathy, and the potential lies in every heart. Auschwitz and Dachau and Belsen. The killing fields of Cambodia. The tens of millions murdered by Stalin, by Mao. When feverish politics and demented ideology entwine, those who are not well anchored to the beliefs that allow a civil society can be swept away, becoming part of the storm of madness that lays waste to everything. When she spoke of a war that had raged before stars ever formed, she seemed to have bought into a cultish creed that might lead to fanaticism and madness.
In Panthea’s home, however, Bridget and I found our experience of the morning—what we had seen when drawn into mirrors as if into another world—replicated on the walls of the front room. If these murals were part of Panthea’s madness, then we were mad as well.