He writhed helplessly on the bed, the blue light flaring irregularly now, jagged pulses of it blazing from beneath his half-closed eyelids. The room smelled like ozone, like thunderstorms. Even through her fury Greta could sense, almost see the struggle inside his mind, the effort of something battered and wounded and at the end of its strength still trying to pull itself free. The image was terrible and vivid: a point of white light, dim and wavering, in the grips of a poisonous blue brilliance. The blue spoke to her of ionized-air glow, the deadly shade of light given off at the moment of a prompt-critical burst; of the unearthly lambence of Cerenkov radiation, a cyan halo thrown by radioactive material underwater; of the killing endless blue of a desert sky at midday, vicious and inimical. It was so clear in her head that she wondered briefly if the contact with Varney were somehow lending her a little of what he might be seeing, with those odd reflective eyes.
But the struggles were still intensifying. Now the monk was no longer writhing but convulsing, huge clonic spasms, and his heart—already under terrible strain from his injuries—couldn’t stand much more of this. Greta let go of Varney, turning to reach for her bag and the syringes and vials locked inside, but as she did the man in the bed gave a horrible choked gasp. His whole body stiffened, his back rising free of the bed in a rigid tetanic arch. Around her the others jerked back in shock.
Greta, trained to observe, was the only one who accurately witnessed what happened in the next few seconds. Afterward she would describe seeing three tendrils of something like bright blue-glowing smoke uncoil from his eyes and open mouth, joined by two thinner wisps of light rising from his nostrils. The blue light flowed together into a cloud above his face, swirling angrily as if undecided. She had a very clear sensation that, whatever it was, it was watching her—it saw her very well, and marked her interference in the course of its affairs.
For a moment longer the glowing cloud hovered over his face; then something like a silent thunderclap shocked through the air of the room, and the light—and whatever it was that had made it—was gone.
Its host collapsed back against the bed, gasping, a trickle of bright blood tracing down his chin from a bitten lip—but the eyes he opened a few moments later, while ruined and weeping, were no longer blue.
His name was Stephen Halethorpe.
They’d gotten that much out of him before Greta sent everyone away. Whatever had been inhabiting him had been keeping his physical condition stable, and after its departure she was having to do some rapid work to restore that stability. The others had retreated to the kitchen, where Fastitocalon was trying to explain what the hell had just happened.
“Fascinating,” said Ruthven, who had followed the explanation rather more closely than Varney or Cranswell. He was eyeing Fastitocalon thoughtfully. “When we have time—not now, but when we have time—I want you to go over all this in quite a lot more detail.”
“If you like,” Fastitocalon said. He had an absolutely clanging headache. Being in the same room as the recent events had been a bit like experiencing a metaphysical sonic boom. “The parallels between the science of magic, more properly termed mirabilics, and physics are not complete but offer a useful viewpoint from which to begin examining the subject.”
Varney seemed to have lost some of his melancholy distance. He was leaning into the conversation, frowning intently, even if he did keep rubbing at his shoulder as if it hurt him. Fastitocalon thought he was probably finding the sensation of being an active and valued participant in a group to be a novel, and not unpleasant, one. “This mirabilics business,” Varney said. “Is it strictly relevant?”
“To a certain extent, I’m afraid,” said Fastitocalon. “It doesn’t require that you understand the whole of the theory behind it, just the concept of the laws that govern the behavior of pneuma.”
“Pneuma being …”
Fastitocalon sighed. “You can use the Gnostic definition if you like, spirit, but it technically refers to the equivalent of matter on the higher planes. Each individual has a unique pneumic signature that can be identified and tracked. It’s how I found our Mr. Halethorpe in the first place. Ordinary humans’ pneumic signatures are easily differentiated from supernaturals’ because of the behavior and interaction of certain particles and the resulting mirabilic field arrangements, which are perceptible to several nonhuman species and, under some circumstances, to individual humans with a certain type of genetic peculiarity.”
“What Fass means, I think, is that we all have a … a specific identifiable code,” Ruthven said. “Which can be called a spirit or a soul, if you want, and which varies based on the organization of these particles and so on. But an outside influence can actually alter that alignment, changing the code itself, which means that the way we ourselves interact with reality is changed. Am I close?”
Fastitocalon nodded. “More or less. It’s like instant genetic engineering, in a way. Change someone’s pneumic signature on the higher planes to indicate he’s got a tail and bang, there he is with a tail on the prime material plane, for as long as you keep the influence on. That’s important. Without it, the normal signature will reassert itself. This thing, whatever it is, made some pretty significant changes to Mr. Halethorpe’s weight on reality, which have now been undone.”
“That is the explanation for his apparent ability to see despite the injury to his eyes?” Varney asked.
“Yes, and now that it’s gone he’s probably stone blind. It’s also been keeping him from succumbing to shock and infection despite the amount of abuse his body’s undergone. I don’t honestly know how long he’s got without it.”
“But he is mortal again,” Varney said, looking distant. “He is human, and may receive absolution?”
“I should think so. Theology isn’t really my division.”
Ruthven tapped his nails on the table thoughtfully. “And you think this isn’t related to Heaven or Hell, or at least not in any official capacity? As in, they aren’t responsible for it and moreover aren’t aware of it?”
“I don’t know,” Fastitocalon said. “I honestly don’t. It doesn’t feel infernal or divine, those are generally easy to recognize, but there have been instances of internal schism more than once over the course of existence and I suppose it’s just possible that some ancient splinter of one or the other is responsible for this mess.”
“Schism?” Varney asked, once more focused on the present. “There are doctrinal disagreements between demons?”