Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(11)

Abe nodded, and the man returned the gesture.

"Do you think we got it?" Marini shouted. "Is it over?"

The echoes of gunshots faded away, but the fat lady still screamed.

"Ask her to sing instead of screaming in my ear, and it will be."

Venice. Abe Sapiens favorite city. Damn.



* * *





Air Crash Investigation Center, Lausanne, Switzerland — 1979



"IT'S A PREDICTION more than anything," Richard Blake said. "The Book of Ways was written so long ago that Zahid de Lainree obviously couldn't have been specific, but he's quite clear in the implications." He and his brother sat on the hillside overlooking the acres of hangars and smaller buildings. Lake Geneva glittered in the distance, and the air was crisp, cool, and clear. And still. Waiting for something to happen. Richard had the Book of Ways opened on his lap, his hands shading it from the sun. Such old parchment, so brittle, found exposure inimical.

"So there's no way of saying for sure that they're the cause of every crash?" Galileo Blake said. "And it's all just supposition anyway?"

"No way at all. And yes, it's prediction and supposition on de Lainree's part. But why is that a problem? We've been chasing myths for years, and what are they if not supposition written down or passed on through word of mouth?"

Gal leaned back, raised his face to the sun, and sighed. "Nobody likes a smart-ass."

Richard ignored him and scanned the page of the Book of Ways. He closed his eyes and muttered a spell of course, and when he looked again, the words seemed to have altered. They led this way instead of that, said one thing and not another, and Richard smiled as he started relaying the relevant information to Gal.

"Small spirits, and minor," he said, "and yet possessed of flesh and blood and bone. Helpful to most, merely mischievous to others, they know the way of metals and powers, the stretch of tools and the magic of fixings. Their pleasure is in building, and in helping humans discover new ways and means. This manner may continue, and it may not ... though if the humans disregard the spirits and claim their own inventions, the spirits may rise up. Mischievous will become nasty, creativity will give way to persistent deconstruction, and the humans will live to regret their ignorance and arrogance."

"Sounds about right," Gal said. He leaned over and stared at the page Richard was examining. The parchment was almost bare but for three curving lines, each spanning a different axis. At their center was what looked like an image of the sun. It glowed. "It says all that there?" he asked.

"In a manner of speaking."

"Looks like a lot of lines to me."

"That's why I read, and you send. I'm the brain, and you're the muscle." He grinned at his brother and rolled aside to escape the playful punch he knew would come.

"Let's go, then," Gal said, standing and brushing down his trousers. "No time like the present. And we haven't sent the old man anything in a while."

"He liked the dragons tooth," Richard said. "That was a real treat for him."

Gal grinned as he started walking down the hillside. "And it'll be a real treat for someone else, too," he said. "Such a treat."



* * *



From Egypt the feather of a phoenix, from England a dragons tooth, and now in Switzerland they sought something else entirely. They had not seen their father for four years, and yet they felt closer to him than ever.

When they were children, he had not been there. Benedict Blake — great scientist, philosopher, explorer of arcane mysteries, environmentalist, and naturalist — had never been a great father. Their mother brought them up and protected them, and she often told them what a wonderful man their father was. But not to them. For Richard and Steven — as a boy, he had not found cause to change his name, for he had not yet been wronged — Blake was simply an absence in their lives. He lectured around the world and wrote books and articles, but he had never once spent a Sunday afternoon in their back garden playing football, drinking lemonade, and planning the long walk they would take that evening. He had never ventured into the woods with them to help them dam a stream, or grabbed a kite and run into the wind out on the moor, or sat with them on either side of him while he read a bedtime story or listened to them talk about their school day. He was a great man wrapped up in his greatness, and it squeezed out true time. They watched him waste his life when he should have been living it. And their mother, beautiful and mournful, was as sad as they.