Stormchild by Bernard Cornwell Page B

Pacific.”
    “Where, exactly?” I insisted.
    Von Rellsteb paused. “I won’t tell you.” He held up a placatory hand to still my protest, then, as though he needed to move if he was to think and express himself properly, he began pacing up and down the channel’s bank. “I have long dreamed of a community that could devote itself to oneness with the earth. A biocentric community, without distractions, living in a silence that might let us hear the echoes of creation and the music of life.” He gave me a sudden smile. “You, of all people, know what I mean! You’ve known the transforming wonder of sitting in a small boat in the center of an ocean in the middle of a night, and suddenly feeling that you steered a vessel among the stars. You could live forever at that moment. There’s no history, no anger, no pride, just you and creation and a terrifying, exhilarating mystery. If I am to pierce that mystery, and find its meaning, then I must live in the center of silence. That’s what we do.” He paused, seeking a further explanation that would satisfy me. “Perhaps we’re making the first eco-religion? Perhaps the new millennium will need such a faith? But to forge it, we must live without distraction, and so our first rule, our golden rule, is that we keep ourselves private. That, Mr. Blackburn, is why I will not tell you where we live.”
    He had almost seduced me with his gently beguiling voice, but some part of me, a robust part of me, would not be sucked into his vision. “You call lacing a swimming pool with oil living in the center of silence?”
    “Oh, dear.” Von Rellsteb seemed disappointed with me. He was quiet for a few heartbeats, then offered a further explanation. “We don’t want to be selfish. We don’t want to withdraw totally from the world. Most of the community does stay separate, but a few of us, like myself and Nicole, have to go into the world and deliver shocks to those people who would fill the planet with noise and disgust and dirt and rancor. One day, Mr. Blackburn, the whole world will live in harmony, and the Genesis community both anticipates that era and tries to bring it about. But if I told people where we lived, then I know visitors would come to us, and distract us, and maybe weaken us.”
    “You don’t have much faith in your vision, do you?”
    “I have no faith in those who do not share my vision,” von Rellsteb said firmly. “And even though I am sure you are not hostile to it, you are still not one of us. Unless you’d like to join us?”
    “No!”
    He laughed, then stepped back. “I’ll give Nicole your letter. I know she’ll be pained about her mother.”
    “I want to see her!”
    “Maybe you can.” Von Rellsteb stepped back another pace. He was going into the darkness.
    “What the hell does that mean?” I demanded.
    “If she wants to see you, then you will see her.” He stepped further back.
    I felt my chances of seeing Nicole slipping away with von Rellsteb’s retreat. “Tell her I love her!” I called to him.
    “The world is love, Mr. Blackburn.” Lightning slashed at the sea, drowning the air with its sudden light, and in its slicing brilliance I caught a frozen glimpse of Caspar von Rellsteb’s face, and, in that instant, he seemed to be laughing at me with satanic glee. What earlier had seemed comforting and intelligent now looked evil, but, when my eyes adjusted to the dark again, von Rellsteb had vanished. He had come from the night, and seemed to have dissolved back into it.
    “Von Rellsteb!” I shouted.
    There was no answer. The sea sucked at the mangrove roots.
    “Von Rellsteb!”
    But there was only silence and darkness.
     
    I turned away. I felt dizzy, almost drunk, as though I had been mesmerized by von Rellsteb’s voice, yet I could not shake the memory of that sudden satanic epiphany. Had he been laughing at me? Had his victory this night consisted of fooling a man whose wife he had killed and whose daughter he had